allegiance

sift

sift i am not all water nor does the cue ball sink me nor the cowboy rope me, nor the monk sit through me. i am a thousand faces at the bottom of the bottom’s gravel. the sea-sharpened stones that clink and soundlessly shift make one. and i am not all river not the sand on the tongue’s first someone or even a falling star. i am all tooth and nail breaks that bitter underwater and a million years of sea-smash dirt in your eye to dig out. i am not all nigger: a black hole crooning in the night. 3 a country song in a deep jukebox chewed down and rumbling. so who decides who belongs here which tooth should have been kicked out when which hole ought to be filled. this is what i think: every city has a country bar. i am not always so tough when i walk in. what is rain to the desert is just another full mouth in some place like portland. and i wonder if there are niggers here in oregon. black-out dolls, wet and papery, their mouths full of chalk. and some of you don’t go here, either. looking for ground to settle or a place to sit that isn’t soggy and cold. same here. everything grows damp, eventually. anything can fall in. i can put on a bad face, understand. i can gunload and prostrate. could swallow you whole in any town. 4 i could keep from throwing the beer bottle, too. keep from tearing up the green with my teeth. but can i keep from being silt from slipping wherever i go. and is everything something to rot for our eyes to wriggle out of? but, i am not all guilty. nor can i be all sea. this is just a bone song. one we can both whistle along the skin to in a skulk drag, down through the rift. 5 ...