From “Intimate Archives”
Tulsa “The Black Wall Street” Bombing
we consummated our marriage
on a bed littered with sour faces
of dead presidents, liberated livestock
sweating through the dollars.
call it loot looting its owner, or the lack
of snow on our lawns last winter,
the blue sky overhead now pitching
an ammo lethal as white discontent.
Monticello
outside our bed, everything was kissing
or biting you in the name of disgust, in
the name of labor, in the name of flesh
breaking, and babies being born
the man never did smile in his portraits,
but by the pitch of your cries, by the perse
abrasions on your throat, Sally, I knew
he had a set of teeth.