Immigrant Aria, and: Boy-Not-Boy

Immigrant Aria

there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of the sea!

—D. H. Lawrence

To swallow new names like krill, dive.   You have few tides before youreturn to motion. Once this shrine

   was the abyssal plain. Once Empireshackled you. Once you answered   to monster, to dragon, spewing steam, fire

bellowing in the furnace of your hide,   a migrant captured for brown skin'slabor. Somewhere inside the darkness

   where brews flame, a spirit hoversover the deep. Once before Adam named   you illegal you snaked, breaking

into air. Spit out his poison, jaw-clap   the sea. With your aft-fin's trailing edgechurn surface to milk. In the beginning,

   you were formed with great light.

Boy-Not-Boy

At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of heat.

—Rig Veda 10:129:3

As a child I lamented, Drink from this   cup, stitch-rip sequins and tear yourpetticoat. Carmine sari pleats into

   my brief's elastic, which twangedand burst, strung too tight. What color   sings broken string? My whale mer-

tail stuck my throat, a tussah delight too   leviathan to hide. Now my dagger-eyes, lined in moon-cured kohl,

   hurricane their bathypelagic coal. Hearmy gourd croon and sigh; my tune   its own Veda. In the beginning, desire

descended to an earth bathed in night.   Seeking sun, I leap from the aphotic zoneto bring to the surface light; my hymn,

   a forgiveness to rise from fluke to breach.