First Date, and: Agnosis

FIRST DATE

I take my cue from the blizzardmaking a name for itself outsidethe café window: give myself awayin shards. First, each hour spenton the threshing floor, so hungryfor the force of the Lordthere were days I dared not move, poringover ancient law until the walls bled.Then, the flashing image of Princetonin 1856, every slave a young man bringsto campus dressed in black, an extra pairof hands to mend the trousers, or brushhis hair before bed. Then my father scalingthe side of our house with no ladder, too poorto call the locksmith. Then the blonde manon the A train last month; his broken nose turningeach fist into a bolt of red silk. Then my father again,but smaller this time. This time no one pities him.He is prettier than everyone else on the elevator.My mother still jokes about catching him catchinghimself in the switchboard’s reflection, as if an afroedNarcissus seconds before the fall, all thirty-two teethshining bright as Lucifer’s waistcoat.

AGNOSIS

Living as I do,indeed, as anycontemporary Negro

lives, at the pointof collision betweenour secular age

& the blood-stainedsurrealism post-racial Americaengenders, I often catch myself

praying to what I cannot name. The spacewhere I tend to think god isn’t

sits like an acrylic crownchipped clean off during casualconversation, nary a sound

to mark the break, fillthe wound, tonguenow in mad pursuit

of the irretrievable.All that remains:blood without

borders, metalpost & torpid bone,at this point, I’m sure

you know whatI’m after. Howa body remembers

the character of whatis jettisoned from its hold:prosthetic, veneer,

both simulacra & out-line, like a solid ghost.As if an entire angel,

the moment of perilflashes up before me& I reach for the trees

—out of some raw,decaying instinct,to be sure—all

my wisdom alreadyash. I know. I know.Show some dignity.

For wasn’t it my handsthat built the pyre, praisedthe flame, these lips

which drank to the adventof a new, modern sensibility.You’re going to make me

say it. Yes. Therewere days I yearnedfor the Paraclete’s

visitation like a runof fish arrowing maplessthrough the incalculable

gray, each spurred by impulseolder than any humanword for darkness.

There were days I gavemy hunger to the air& did not go without.