For Bob Kaufman and: Sudan
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For Bob Kaufman
Armchair throne. A crownOf electrodes attached
To your cranial guitar.Bohemian brain waves
Cooked crisp. You, swiftPhoenix, rose anew
& Jump-ropedJail-time.
After readingMichael S. Harper’s
Vintage Anthology,I traced your footsteps
Hoodooing the hoodooMan from misty
Bayous to sourdoughStreets. I offered
Your tongueGator-sausage
Links, bread pudding,Vodka & orange juice,
But it switchedInto a cloud
& Floated aboveGolden Gate Bridge.
Sudan
Sunlight won’t splitthe man on horseback
in half, or carry you &your grasshopper ration
across the Chadian border,
’cause outside of a vacuumlight can’t travel faster.
Black woman, you haveno God, he says before
your eyes sink backinto the skull. Your stiff [End Page 149]
body, now, matchingthe temperature of his disgust.
All you wanted wasokra & grain, not to find
your mother’s bodydumped in a ditch.
What adjective is strongenough to fill in the hole
where her jaw should be?
The cultures of her cervix,a shade of blue seen
most often in dreams. [End Page 150]
Jonathan Moody received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is a Cave Canem alumnus. His poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Gathering Ground, Xavier Review, among other publications. His work is forthcoming in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Common, and Tidal Basin Review. He is the author of The Doomy Poems (Six Gallery, 2012) and lives in Fresno, Texas with his wife and baby boy.
