The black poet would love to say his century began

With Hughes or God forbid, Wheatley, but actually

It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors,

Poetry whiners & winos falling from ship bows, sunset

Bridges & windows. In a second I’ll tell you how little

Writing rescues. My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not

Especially fun company. A drama queen, thin-skinned,

And skittery, she thought her poems were ordinary.

What do you call a visionary who does not recognize

Her vision? Orpheus was alone when he invented writing.

His manic drawing became a kind of writing when he sent

His beloved a sketch of an eye with an X struck through it.

He meant I am blind without you. She thought he meant

I never want to see you again. It is possible he meant that, too.

Inside me is a black-eyed animal

Bracing in a small stall. As if a bird

Could grow without breaking its shell.

As if the clatter of a thousand black

Birds whipping in a storm could be held

In a shell. Inside me is a huge black

Bull balled small enough to fit inside

The bead of a nipple ring. I mean to leave

A record of my raptures. I was raised

By a beautiful man. I loved his grasp of time.

My mother shaped my grasp of space.

Would you rather spend the rest of eternity

With your wild wings bewildering a cage or

With your four good feet stuck in a plot of dirt?

But there never was a black male hysteria

Because a fret of white men drove you crazy

Or a clutch of goons drove you through Money,

Stole your money, paid you money, stole it again.

There was a black male review for ladies night

At the nightclub. There was a black male review

By suits in the offices, the courts & waiting rooms.

There was a black male review in the weight rooms

Where coaches licked their whistles. Reviews,

Once-overs, half-studies, misreads & night

Mares looped the news. Your jolts & tears gained

Rubberneckers, eyeballers & bawlers in Money,

Mississippi. The stares you got were crazy,

It’s true. But there never was a black male hysteria.

Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk

Of musk, muster & deliberation crawling over reasons

And possessions I have & have not touched?

Should I fail in my insecticide, I pray for a black boy

Who lifts you to a flame with bedeviled tweezers

Until mercy rises & disappears. You are the size

Of a stuttering drop of liquid—milk, machine oil

Semen, blood. Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel

In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between

Pleasure & disgust. You are the scent of rot at the heart

Of love-making. The meat inside your exoskeleton

Is as tender as Jesus. Neruda wrote of “a nipple

Perfuming the earth.” Yes, you are an odor, an almost

Imperceptible ode to death, a lousy, stinking stinkbug.

Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous

Darkness. Probably all my encounters