In the Blood
- In the Blood
Like Rimbaud in Ethiopia,He slips his hands into doeskin glovesBefore touching barrels & trigger housings.Cold steel burns Cosmoline & cerecloth,
As if to ignite the gunpowderIn his genes. "My great-granddaddyWas at The Alamo," he loves to say.But that never explained his lost twin brother,
The name his mother never stoppedCalling in her sleep, the one now ten miles awayIn the same desert, surrounded with bullion& automatic rifles. If they met
They'd slap each other on the shoulder,Call the buyers barbarians, have caviarIn Monte Carlo, talk about Alma in Rio,Facing each other like mirrors someone forgot to silver. [End Page 488]
Yusef Komunyakaa, who has received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Wallace Stevens Award, is distinguished senior poet in the New York University graduate program in creative writing. Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005, he is the author of Neon Vernacular; Dien Cai Dau; Dedications and Other Dark Horses; Lost in the Bonewheel Factory; Copacetic; I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head; Talking Dirty to the Gods; Thieves of Paradise; The Chameleon Couch; Testimony: A Tribute to Charlie Parker; Emperor of Water Clocks; and Gilgamesh: A Verse Play.
