The Zero Country

The children of fugitives perhaps lust for nothing

so much as a country where we are faster

than everything else. Here I graceless bouquet

of dark whipping hard through a need

for electric. No one wants to be the negro swan,

the song like all songs    the surrogate

of a man. Above estate upon estate

of storm clouds, to the sides pine

and green and implication. Road

of isolated light, always a storm is possible, always

what I need to know the property of another

dark. No one wants to be the swan who cracks

the quiet, I have been waiting though, I think

all my life to siren like this     tonight

I sound to strike down the tether.

Crowned by elegy, crowned by escape; I am

so tired of ruling my sorrow this way. But

I am practiced, I father the bass

until each branch knows its sovereign

is less of a country than of a sound.

I am coming, toward something

I cannot name but still own. O, Mississippi;

bloodsong again has me singing you

past the curfew of the once-owned. Trust me,

not even the heat can save you now.

When I move like this I am certain nothing

for miles can touch me      I have never let a man

touch me.   Yet I live     in the fact of  touch.

I’m swerving   in the anthem   I play

when I am willing my lone exit into a palace

of doors.       I mean to stain everything

when the war comes. I intend to die

with a blade through every hunger.    What violences

me here, names the tether after love. What wants me

dead can’t decide which me to kill first. I learned

from the soft of the kudzu how to swallow the enemy

and call the color landscape. Let the lyric fool you,

dearest enemy      I kill best to the slow songs.