Fast breaks, Lay up, With Mercury’s Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered the footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
A high note hung there
A long second. Off
The rim. We’d corkscrew
Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good
Intention.
I can’t help but think of bodies
spoon-fashion in the belly of a ship.
Gods pour us into molds they dream;
Legba mends hope, the breath-cup, footsteps
in plaster of Paris.
First you must have unbelievable faith in water, in women dancing like hands playing harps as principle forces for straw to grow stalks of fire.
You must understand the year that begins with your hands tied behind your back, worship of dark totems weighed down with night-birds that shift their weight & leave holes in the sky.
You must know what’s behind the shadow of a treadmill; its window the moon’s reflection-the silent season that reaches toward red sunlit hills which everything returns to.
You must know the hard silence of building walls that sway with summer storms-locking arms
learn more
