Requiem for Toni Morrison
I remember a time before radio
A little piece of the world that I knew
A little piece that I knew
And the music was information told me mama’s mood to move or sway new ghost this way
A little peace I knew a shivering always verging libretto trochaic blowout comb newspiece
It’s not that she is running away or wanted the perfume counter or wore suede in summer but the gate
sways into portal plays its immortal code in doting shores a restful orgy of over here look
Chloe reborn on ladders by morning weeping the wings off a batch of warnings
Turnings shattered sirens whipping the sun’s utterance into rose milk she wanted
to be a dancer
She makes herself a dancer move out of her way eat the pillar of leaving choke on
those oceanic starchords It’s just that to form this omen of the next world in our
mouths with her
To feel it sip our tongues one thing in common in the scattered static of insects and
merchants
That watches the night when a new saint goes riding when a new rider gets ready
To narrate no way ain’t no way to say that but with speechless symbol hold this
Skin the Nile is flooding eight entrances blurring its black seed sound in
bloom we shed eyes in the tomb got so night blindness turned into extreme
seeing how if we keep drowning we’ll learn to breathe in the through-beneath
If you can keep me and even the way she says no is neat and enclosed
in God’s suicide
Source: Poetry (April 2020)