Beauty's Nest
JIM CROW WELCOMES YOU HOME
AFTER THE WAR, JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT
GRAND CANYON: 1951
Beauty's nest
renders the body
mute. An elegance
so inconceivable,
it's violent. Extreme. It hurts
the heart to see
something so vast and deep
can also be made of dirt.
And if it can be
of the earth, the body
ponders, might
such a landscape
exist also within me?
The four of you stand
silent, uniformed on its rim,
while the imagination tries
to conceive all the things
it is still too dark
to see.
You jump back
into your wide tan Ford
and begin to drive
again — again — past
all the motels, and their signs,
which, were it not just
after midnight, you know —
and could see — say
WHITES ONLY
Red All Over
The politics of frogs
The musth of butterflies
Elegies of cotton
The whiteness of flies
Interruptions by snails
A lie's guarantee
The hope of succotash
A chorus of hominy
Permission of the persimmon
Observations by the spine
The pincushion's reassurance
The propaganda of a line
Cackling from the Bible
Orations by the dog
The mirror's steady rifle
The fig tree's scarlet log
Ands and their derision
Lending library in the eyes
Patois' agnosticism
The tongue's chain mail of whys?
Lady calling from the ocean
Invisible Man on the moon
Lindy-Hopping dead upon
The ceiling in the living room
Girl asleep in the avocado
The minstrelsy of the floor
Bickering Birds-of-Paradise
Picketing the fickle front door
Dog Talk
We-be bo-broke e-bev-ry-by
sy-byl-la-ba-ble-ble
O-bour mo-bouths bo-broke the-bem
a-band o-bo-pe-bened the-bem
fo-bor ai-bair o-bor wa-ba-ter-ber
o-bor see-beed o-bor foo-bood.
A-banse-se-bers, que-bues-tio-bens,
na-bames, se-be-cre-bets. We-be
be-bent E-ben-gli-bish,
em-bem-bra-baced i-bit
the-ben e-be-ra-based i-bit
a-bat the-be sa-bame ti-bime.
___________________
R O B I N C O S T E L E W I S
Voyage of the Sable Venus
Knopf 2015
