Salt Water Undoing
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Salt Water Undoing
you cross seato greet loneliness an ocean doesn’t allow you to cross her salt water without barter words shipwreck vowels uncurl themselves to flatlines consonants coil into periods whole sentence turn against themselves and rescind to silence so loneliness needles your lipsand the salt of blood tastes like home [End Page 231]
a board house can only hold so many secrets and a body even less and a body of lies gobbles its own flesh faster than a board house rots itself to dust i am tired of trying to pluck the gay out ofscabbing skin to hawk spit the lesbian out ofmy lung i would belt-buckle the lesbian out of youand warm olive oil is pressed against my forehead as though my gay is wax – melting away at the hushed whisper of a psalm– and i am tired of watching the gay drip red from my thighs scab bruise myself for my iniquities (D. S. Harrigin- Ramoutar 53:5) jesus won’t save me i am sinner and saintwhat are these scars and i’m too ashamed to admit i tried to bore loveout of my bones with razor blades –but shame betrays me more than happiness– jesus was tempted with sin so maybe jesus was gay too [End Page 232]
on first sundays my mother says not to partake of the bread body unworthily but gods like sinners ruptured blood bodies of sin [can’t save the good they’re good already]some of us stripe ourselves with our owniniquities bruise ourselves with our transgressionsshe likes her bodies broken thighs for palms she lays hands on the unworthy [the Atlantic is a black woman’s water breaking (ask the bones of her children she still cradles if you don’t believe me)god is black, 5’4” and has thick thighs] she substitutes olive oil and wine with salt water anoints my tongue with her finger tips lest i partake of the body unworthilyin the name of the mother whose ruin was the Atlantic; and so was her salvationin the name of her daughters ground breaks sugar-cane whipping gave life to dirt [End Page 233]
death loves better ground calls her child homein the name of holiness [holiness: melanin and molasses also see: recipe for the woman black body] reverence | idolatry is sin | no white woman shall desecrate my corporeal beingsalt to cleanse my woundssalt water baptisms [End Page 234]
i know that your bone will break to give life to sunflowers . . . in the darkness of the hollowed earth you now call home roots would burrow deep into yourmarrow and from your mouth sprout bougainvillea like the ones on the hills that belt-buckled a boyinto a man and whatever air is left in you, would spark and glow and burn like flambeaux and from the cavities of each bullet hole wouldshoot forth ixora –it is only consequential– (one for your brother and one for my brother and one for your sister and one for your sister and one for me and one for your mother who now holds her son’s sobbing soul sobbing too– she knows that life strangled a boy into a corpse before he could exhale manhood) like the ones in the garden that watched you too burst and blossom and bloom and shed rose buds to become a man she said she would have swallowed her own blossoms, make crib out of her bosom. . . blanket you with her petals if we’d let her [End Page 235]
but she died too sleep my dear unclench your jaw drool the nectar of the ixora. [End Page 236]
nimble fingers roll yarn –between the thumb and index (undoing)pull apart the thread of what would have been mygrandmother’s doilies (undone) nimble fingers thread a needle pierce one hole and then another and pull two sides together (done)just as i imagine what the morticians did to my cousin and my cousin before him and the boy found, still unclaimed and my neighbor who learned the undoing...
