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A man and a woman

are lying together

listening to news of a war.

The radio dial

is the only light in the room.

Casualties are read out.

He thinks, “Those are people

I no longer have to love,”

and he touches her hair

and calls her name

but it sounds strange to her

like a stone left over

from a house already built.

Dear Yu Honor

Yu may rmember me when yu visits prison

here I am Walter Boyd Leadbelly #42738

yo best big niger from Sugarland Farm

wit my stella guitar and songs yu like

I play it all like a black machine for yu loud an slow

Down in the valley    What a frend we have in

Jesus an I Sugarland shuffle like pickin cotton far as

eye cn see I need my freedom like yu said yu was gone give me

yur honor all I need a second chance rmembr me

yu sed I was som niger   som niger need they pardon

GOVERNOR

thank yu for yo kind kind hand yo wisdum.

Copyright 2004 by Tyehimba Jess. Published by Verse Press. Reprinted with permission of the author and Wave Books. 

so mama said no running, afraid
for me: shriveled lansones, sickly.

threat of skinned shins. cherry
glow of lola’s clove cigarettes,

smoke plumes sealing my throat.
or on my cheeks, plum rashes

blooming from playing in witchwillow.
these days, I don’t run much.

but I was only seven when I broke
a girl’s front teeth. 

My father believes that the United States is destined one day to be engulfed in a socialist revolution. All revolutions are bloody, he says, but this one will be the bloodiest of them all. The working class—which includes me—will at some point in the not-so-distant future decide to put down the tools of our trade, pour into the streets, beat the police into submission, take over the means of production, and usher in a new epoch—the final epoch—of peace and equality. This revolution is not only inevitable, it is imminent. It is not only imminent, it is quite imminent. And when the time comes, my father will lead it.

As Frankel muses on Progress in his Hillman Minx, Ed Markowitz wearily drives a rented Fiat to the Oriental Institute. He had not wanted to go on the day of his arrival, but this is the only time he can be sure to see Mujahid Rashaf, who is returning to Saudi Arabia within the week. Rashaf is an Oxford fellow and the son of a merchant prince. He will provide just the reasoned yet religious opinions that Markowitz seeks for his book, Terrorism: A Civilized Creed.

The shambles of the gods stretches for miles,

a salvage yard where the smell of hot chrome rises,

where finned bodies lie beached and rusting,

and their names recall great chiefs

and tribes and the empowering animals.

Thunderbird, Winnebago, Mustang, Pontiac –

you must say these names out loud. You must

strip the radios in which the myths survive.

Repeat: Wi-Yuh returns to abolish the custom of killing

the beasts for their names. Leave the road maps

on the dashboards. Learn the song of spawning fish.