Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa

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СКАЧАТЬ a mountain to scale,

      institutions built with bones, guns hidden in walls

      that swing open like big-mouthed B-52s.

      Your face in the mirror is my face. You tapdance

      on tabletops for me, while corporate bosses

      arm wrestle in back rooms for your essential downfall.

      I entice homosexuals into my basement butcher shop.

      I put my hands around another sharecropper’s throat

      for that mink coat you want from Saks Fifth,

      short-change another beggarwoman,

      steal another hit song from Sleepy

      John Estes, salt another gold mine in Cripple Creek,

      drive another motorcycle up a circular ice wall,

      face another public gunslinger like a bad chest wound,

      just to slide hands under black silk.

      Like the Ancient Mariner steering a skeleton ship

      against the moon, I’m their hired gunman

      if the price is right, take a contract on myself.

      They’ll name mountains & rivers in my honor.

      I’m a drawbridge over manholes for you, sweetheart.

      I’m paid two hundred grand

      to pick up a red telephone anytime & call up God.

      I’m making tobacco pouches out of the breasts of Indian

      maidens so we can stand in a valley & watch grass grow.

Feet Nailed to the Floor

      The Gypsy gazes into her crystal ball

      to see a rooster drop in the dust.

      One note of samba still burns

      in the skull. The white-haired orator

      has fallen asleep in his fireside chair,

      & it’s now out of my hands.

      Even your dear mama has taken the gold

      crucifix from around her neck

      & dropped it into a beggar’s tincup.

      The seal is affixed. What can I say?

      That informer, I bet his hands

      are now on your sister’s legs.

      I want to wash mine. Seven times

      today the guards have chased children

      who shout your name. You are a saint

      to them, but blood isn’t yet dripping

      in the courtyard from mango leaves.

      The hole has been dug & a blindfold

      cut from a lover’s nightgown.

The Nazi Doll

      It sits lopsided

      in a cage. Membrane.

      Vertebra. This precious, white

      ceramic doll’s brain

      twisted out of a knob of tungsten.

      It bleeds a crooked smile

      & arsenic sizzles in the air.

      Its eyes an old lie.

      Its bogus tongue, Le Diable.

      Its lampshade of memory.

      Guilt yahoos, benedictions

      in its Cro-Magnon skull

      blossom, a flurry of fireflies,

      vowels of rattlesnake beads.

      Its heart hums the song of dust

      like a sweet beehive.

Breaking Camp

      Crops fall apart

      in our hands, the whole year

      stripped down to a penny’s

      seed grain, huddled under

      last night’s dogstar.

      Places like Portales & Amarillo,

      the only road out of town coughs

      blood & dust. Tied to the ground

      with songs, we sit along roadsides

      like grass waiting for blades.

      We clutch beads & pray our children grow

      blind, stitching closed black pockets

      while the stone-gatherers close in.

      Property lines & night-blooming cereus

      rush up to us, corrugated roofs

      remembering the sky in rearview mirrors.

      We leave voices buried under a sycamore,

      ashes in a vase feeding its roots.

      Following crops & shooting stars,

      birds whirl south before a rainstorm

      scrubs the stone floor

      of the Panhandle. Each day is now

      a yellow tractor rusting under a tin shed

      where we feel our clothes grow thinner.

Corrigenda

      I take it back.

      The crow doesn’t have red wings.

      They’re pages of dust.

      The woman in the dark room

      takes the barrel of a .357 magnum

      out of her mouth, reclines

      on your СКАЧАТЬ