Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa

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СКАЧАТЬ anything that wore

      Pants. White, black,

      Chinese, crazy, or old.

      Some woman in Chicago

      hooked a blade into her.

      Remember? Now don’t say

      You done forgot Charlene.

       Her face a little blurred

      But she coming back now.

       Loud & clear. With those

      Real big, sad, gray eyes.

       A natural-born hellraiser,

      & loose as persimmon pie.

      You said it, honey.

      Miss High Yellow.

      I heard she’s the reason

      Frank shot down Otis Lee

      Like a dog in The Blue

      Moon. She was a blood-

      Sucker. I hate to say this,

      But she had Arthur

      On a short leash too.

      Your Arthur, Mary.

       She was only a girl

      When Arthur closed his eyes.

      Thirteen at the most.

      She was doing what women do

      Even then. I saw them

      With my own two eyes,

      & promised God Almighty

      I wouldn’t mention it.

      But it don’t hurt

      To mention it now, not

      After all these years.

       Right column

      Heat lightning jumpstarts the slow

      afternoon & a syncopated rainfall

      peppers the tinroof like Philly Joe

      Jones’ brushes reaching for a dusky

      backbeat across the high hat. Rhythm

      like cells multiplying … language &

      notes made flesh. Accents & stresses,

      almost sexual. Pleasure’s knot; to wrestle

      the mind down to unrelenting white space,

      to fill each room with spring’s contagious

      changes. Words & music. “Ruby, My Dear”

      turned down on the cassette player,

      pulsates underneath rustic voices

      waltzing out the kitchen—my grandmama

      & an old friend of hers from childhood

      talking B-flat blues. Time & space,

      painful notes, the whole thing wrung

      out of silence. Changes. Caesuras.

      Nina Simone’s downhome cry echoes

      theirs—Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash—

      as a southern breeze herds wild, blood-

      red roses along the barbed-wire fence.

      There’s something in this house, maybe

      those two voices & Satchmo’s gold horn,

      refracting time & making the Harlem

      Renaissance live inside my head.

      I can hear Hughes like a river

      of fingers over Willie “The Lion” Smith’s

      piano, & some naked spiritual releases

      a shadow in a reverie of robes & crosses.

      Oriflamme & Judgment Day … undulant waves

      bring in cries from Sharpeville & Soweto,

      dragging up moans from shark-infested

      seas as a blood moon rises. A shock

      of sunlight breaks the mood & I hear

      my father’s voice growing young again,

      as he says, “The devil’s beating

      his wife”: One side of the road’s rainy

      & the other side’s sunny. Imagination—

      driftwood from a spring flood, stockpiled

      by Furies. Changes. Pinetop’s boogiewoogie

      keys stack against each other like syllables

      in tongue-tripped elegies for Lady Day

      & Duke. Don’t try to make any sense

      out of this; just let it take you

      like Pres’s tenor & keep you human.

      Voices of school girls rush & surge

      through the windows, returning

      with the late March wind; the same need

      pushing my pen across the page.

      Their dresses lyrical against the day’s

      sharp edges. Dark harmonies. Bright

      as lamentations behind a spasm band

      from New Orleans. A throng of boys

      are throwing at a bloodhound barking

      near a blaze of witch hazel at the corner

      of the fence. Mister Backlash.

      I close my eyes & feel castanetted

      fingers on the spine, slow as Monk’s

      “Mysterioso”; a man can hurt for years

      before words flow into a pattern

      so woman-smooth, soft as a СКАЧАТЬ