The Morning Hour

Cave Canem: A Special Section

And these hands my mother’s.

     Washed.

When washing was—when clean could not be. To wrap the body in cotton.      What imprisons.

     When carrying humped—

And these bald knuckles from her. The lips tight. Damp.      This Desire.

Beyond that.      A tiny voice.

The foreign woman who bends over—is spotted. Her wind is taken.

A closed back.      Turned in.      Centered.     A world shut out. The infinite lines welt.      Her voice is open.      Transparent. Dissolved.      A tunnel protector.      A subtle skin.      Olivia.

Hold these shoes to the sun. They are just shoes. What the girl has not. How secret the burden. Carrying nothing. And common.      Breathe.

This moment open.      She wrenches.      Falls into— This small casing inflamed.      She scrubs.      And is common.

What did Negro replace?      Claiming what could have been.      Their strange feet making a way.

And what metaphor? What could call the horrors.

Pressing hands we cannot decipher. An arched woman hunches in. Presence.      Birth.      Our bracelet.

Who navigated wooden ships?      The hardened ankle sucks black earth.      Her slight life.

Help us poison position. And Olivia, the mouth of his children from the mouth of my vagina. And Olivia, what no memory can recall lost eternally inside covered wagons.

Walk eternities. Feet thick as throats. What will become a life.

When do voices gain earth? The finest grain solved between the thumb and forefinger. Reads like the slightest movement of a hip.

And nothing left but time.      And God.      And the dense night. Against skins.

What is simple is nothing.

Imagine history. An entire race looks into the slit camera eye.

Speak of going back, of gathering the horses, the prized memoirs that have nothing to do with place and pack like a boy who leaves his slivered home.

About land.

What is familiar is the warm spice of a girl oiled in lavender.

Into oceans.

Lie and almost remember— almost breathe soiled air and ire.

Count foreign. Make sense of the sounded boots that exhaled fate.

The footsteps are wet. Desire is wet. Is going step by step— The ash trail is wicked. The thicket wept.

Must be quieted—that vast space between the—there. These tittied deities—Our Orishas— How they seized what they did not know.

Every element is bare. Like ruptured mouths— who could not say—who uttered—who died not pronouncing. From Benin to this fractured exile.

     I am in this fist.      I am a witness in exile.

Our old. Two settlers. Claiming Land. The collective hum. A distant Lord Missy. And this huge hand reaches beneath the skin. Want is __________. I am hot inside the bone.

Believe this exit.        Take. Take. Take.