In Transit

In the neighborhood, which is not
unfamiliar, which perpetually resumes
motion in the broadest daylight,

the complexion I'll know all my life
(the complexion of my fear)

is the secret that won't keep.

Around, out here, along the wide street
someone follows me. Stops when I stop.

Listens when I listen. I think,

Is this a game? And, of course, it's not.

I walk faster. My inhaled breath visible
in each glance locating my brother's jaw
in the killer's face. My blood spilling

and his body, a pulsing stick figure
to be shot down or etched into a cell wall.

...

Underneath a colored sky a man
wills himself to rise, each slow start
interrupted by police, their clubs

clubbing the man's head, his chest,
while the man, rather, the black man
(who is altogether a different thing)

is losing on the pavement. As a mother,
brother, sister, wife running red
lights past breathless asphalt, choked

buildings, I arrive again at the curb
squinting, craning forward, knowing
I've got to know: Do I know this man?

Do I recognize his body? Shattered
glass. Blue jeans. Hands up.
Face down. Do I recognize him?

...

Passing, what I heard
was the man asking,
the white man asking.
(as if he, the other
were going nowhere)
the white man asking
for a minute
of the other's time.

It seemed that he,
the white man,
had forgotten and locked
his keys in his car.

Simply that he,
the white man,
had forgotten
and was wondering,
if he, the other, could,
perhaps, get in, could,
somehow, please, break
in and get, please,
the keys out of the car.

...

SHE

Yesterday we made love on the floor,
our rhythm skinned my knee.
Today the insides of my thighs ache,
my knee burns, and love,
you have in mind, it seems, to come
and go as you please,
as if this country were a small town
you might grow old in.

HE:

Always I arrive to find you cry?ng,
your tears taking anything
as their point of departure.
What can be imagined, you imagine.
Must I tell you again, I know better
than to go-or do-or be with-

SHE

But, love, this is America and you
are what is human in my world.
Whenever I hear of another black
man dying, it's again clear

...

I fold into my lover's body
His knee between my legs
His breath a metered presence in my ear

Then his voice, almost closed, so very quiet,
whispers, Did I tell you, I was riding my bike
today on my way home from the gym, and a frat
boy-type tried to cut me of with his car: When we
both stopped for the light-this was on West End
in the eighties-he yelled: "Hey nigger, why
don't you take your black ass back to Africa?"

I fold into my lover's body
His knees between my legs
His breath a metered presence in my ear