1.
Now, rains won’t stop coming / won’t stop falling.
I am reminded of dry youth / cracked dirt /
feet bottoms scorched on asphalt and broken
bits of animals. Mama and father
not quite alone locked in their room / I feel
them chant at me, voices soft / not there:
The Man Who Remembers What Came Before
Remembers Also Who Created Him.
2.
In the drought of nineteen aught seven, when
the rains stopped falling and my parents made
a pact to fuck other people even
though mama said she’s not so sure, I read
a book called Things Fall Apart. I dreamt what
it’d be like to plunge my hands down the throats of
gazelles / to call myself African. I
scar my face with orange dots / blue lines / purple
arrows / yellow waves. There’s a story on
my face. I wanna see elephants. I
wanna dig my heels in red savannah.
I wanna breathe deep / wanna inhale the
air particles that once made up boar dung.
This is my home. I wanna hear mama
in the next room, breathing proverbs into
the extra pillow she keeps on the bed.
3.
In the drought of twenty aught one, when the
crops withered black and my father made wife
of a woman he fucked, I read in a
magazine about a tribe in Sudan
made entirely of mamas / how when
their husbands left them, by death or war or
younger women, how they formed a tribe all
on their own. They’d pluck horned melons off the
vine / crack the rinds with knees / sprinkle it with
cane sugar / eat it up by the spoonful.
4.
In the drought of twenty aught seven, when
animal bones began to chip like slate
and father didn’t call or drop off his
checks or tell where he was, I read a note
taped to the back of mama’s closet door:
Mothers Of Great Men Carry No Weapons /
Mothers Of Great Men Know Things Fall Apart.
5.
Now, rains won’t stop coming / won’t stop falling.
I hear father start the engine of his
twenty aught twelve Dodge Charger R-T /
hear the woman he fucked ask if they can
stop by Arby’s / hear mama move to the
kitchen / hear her bite into cantaloupe.
