Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa

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      Like a small man entering a big woman.

      4 Soft Touch

      Men came to her back door & knocked.

      Food was the password. When switch engines

      Stopped & boxcars changed tracks

      To the sawmill, they came like Gypsies,

      A red bandanna knotted at the throat,

      A harmonica in the hip pocket of overalls

      Thin as washed-out sky. They brought rotgut

      Drought years, following some clear-cut

      Sign or icon in the ambiguous

      Green that led to her back porch

      Like The Black Snake Blues.

      They paid with yellow pencils

      For crackling bread, molasses, & hunks

      Of fatback. Sometimes grits & double-yolk

      Eggs. Collard greens & okra. Louisianne

      Coffee & chicory steamed in heavy white cups.

      They sat on the swing & ate from blue

      Flowered plates. Good-evil men who

      Ran from something or to someone,

      A thirty-year headstart on the Chicago hawk

      That overtook them at Castle Rock.

      She watched each one disappear over the trestle,

      As if he’d turn suddenly & be her lost brother

      Buddy, with bouquets of yellow pencils

      In Mason jars on the kitchen windowsill.

      5 Shotguns

      The day after Christmas

      Blackbirds lifted like a shadow

      Of an oak, slow leaves

      Returning to bare branches.

      We followed them, a hundred

      Small premeditated murders

      Clustered in us like happiness.

      We had the scent of girls

      On our hands & in our mouths,

      Moving like jackrabbits from one

      Dream to the next. Brandnew

      Barrels shone against the day

      & stole wintery light

      From trees. In the time it took

      To run home & grab Daddy’s gun,

      The other wing-footed boys

      Stumbled from the woods.

      Johnny Lee was all I heard,

      A siren in the flesh,

      The name of a fallen friend

      In their wild throats. Only Joe

      Stayed to lift Johnny’s head

      Out of the ditch, rocking back

      & forth. The first thing I did

      Was to toss the shotgun

      Into a winterberry thicket,

      & didn’t know I was running

      To guide the paramedics into

      The dirt-green hush. We sat

      In a wordless huddle outside

      The operating room, till a red light

      Over the door began pulsing

      Like a broken vein in a skull.

      6 Cousins

      Figs. Plums. Stolen

      Red apples were sour

      When weighed against your body

      In the kitchen doorway

      Where late July

      Shone through your flowered dress

      Worn thin by a hundred washings.

      Like colors & strength

      Boiled out of cloth,

      Some deep & tall scent

      Made the daylilies cower.

      Where did the wordless

      Moans come from in twilit

      Rooms between hunger

      & panic? Those years

      We fought aside each other’s hands.

      Sap pulled a song

      From the red-throated robin,

      Drove bloodhounds mad

      At the edge of a cornfield,

      Split the bud down to hot colors.

      I began reading you Yeats

      & Dunbar, hoping for a potion

      To draw the worm out of the heart.

      Naked, unable or afraid,

      We pulled each other back

      Into our clothes.

      7 Immigrants

      Lured by the cobalt

      Stare of blast furnaces,

      They talked to the dead

      & unborn. Their demons

      & gods came with black rhinoceros powder

      In ivory boxes with secret

      Latches that opened only

      Behind unlit dreams.

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