From the Fishouse

(A young Black woman remembers 1870)

1.
I do not come when called
Mostly I materialize

Dark as a kiss
incarnate again
and again
sometimes twice in one life
now mother
now the burnt sugar sweet
of a wide-eyed wide-hipped
too-young lover

now concubine
now priest

I do not come
I am called
when the wayward rib
needs me

2.
America is a dark continent
1878 exploding
industrializing
all over my black behind

When I am called
I arrive black bitch
whore hard-ass
when I am called
I run fugitive
slave-codes Reconstruction
I’ve incarnated into the open
rotted mouths of my own lovers
just to know like they know
burnt
swinging

3.
I dance in the clearing
I laugh too loud
I give benediction
I show off my knickers
and smell like funk
like ragtime
like fiddle and bucket-bass
I walk the long road North
I come when called
I ghost
I materialize
I moan
I dark continent
sweating
I incarnate
then come

I high lace collar
pretending
I don’t shuck and jive
I survive
I nigger I black
I fuck massa in the barn
I serve tea in the big house
I collect Oscar and whipped back
I exposed super-bowl nipple
I Hottentot
I dark continent
don’t tell me ‘bout Africa
no more

Amos and Andy are coming
Toni Morrison is coming
Michael Jackson and Tito Puente are coming
Tuskegee and Kent State are coming
Muhammed Ali is coming
Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza

I incarnate I birth pain
I know the bird
of my next life
singing
coming
called
mother
concubine
songbird
priest
fuck for love
for power
tomorrow
I traitor conscience
fading
come