Cape Verdean Blues Read online

  wandering, without a chance

  for renewal.

  DENIZ

  This part of life should get to be longer. We crashed off a bridge in my sleep that summer you bit into an orange in order to peel it and felt embarrassed when our friends laughed out of slight disgust. You should come with a disclaimer. We learned trades with our hands but there on that bridge we were cultured on the existence of our teeth. Mine grit yours broke. Am I talking about the sun? The sun is on the list of things I make myself I tell myself. I am nothing without. Still, no. I think this is about waves. I think it started with a dream. I should come with a disclaimer. Anything you say or do may be used against you in a poem. Nature itself designed the first bridges. You’re forgetting what sorrow sounds like in the dark. How to season fish. Taste the salt away on fingers. Reward yourself. Get down on your knees and eat. Forgive yourself. Another trick to being alone. I was in the air, still. Resembling how we made our first bound into a hospital room with an open window. I think it started with my mother crying while she spoke. I heard the ocean in her mouth. I think it ended with a sales associate named Deniz, meaning “sea” in Turkish.

  I’M NOT DRUNK; I HAVE ONLY SWALLOWED A BONE!

  In his tongue, I disappear with all the basics

  to say, No, I will not marry you for documents.

  Nights have never been good to me. The hour

  of think this, do that. Manuel’s hair curls like a ribbon

  sprayed with cornstarch. He speaks to me

  in Kriolu, his curls bounce with animation.

  My mouth responds with leg locking

  under a beach tent. My voice is trying to hide

  in my throat; I can tell. My jaw is breaking.

  About Tarrafal, the sweet stray dog

  countryside where we lie, Manuel tells me how the sky

  swells up like a bruise out of nowhere, like a grape

  next to the sun. Language lost on every lick

  placed on my back.

  From Graciosa, Tarrafal’s palm trees are

  deceptively American. Detachment swells up

  out of nowhere, like a bruise surprising for its size

  after scratching. Tarrafal, the sea urchin

  that won’t sting. I need more metaphors

  for hard things to swallow.

  For fun, I let the bones of the eel get to know my mouth,

  an inert place from which I only speak my native

  language when fear trumps freedom. When he’s driving

  stick shift too fast on cobbled roads when on cobbled

  roads he rears too close to stray dogs.

  I work up a loose gut to say I’m not drunk;

  I have only swallowed a bone!

  Wet from Cape Verde’s unremarkable humid winds,

  I chip like a cheap topcoat. Permitting him a taste

  of the English until I come off his tongue,

  needing a name for every move it took to bring forth

  the nebulous identity of rice and beans.

  STROLOGY SCORPIO

  Learn waiting by waiting in daylight. Life used to be hair soaking feathered pillowcases on the first night. Trails of casual October sin dripping down your neck. Nights were your eyes open sinking in another fool’s mouth. Scorpio, try pedaling forwards this month. Put on a song that reminds you of nothing as you wash your hair with three conditioned conditioners. Untangle indecision. Practice bantu knots and Scorpio, you’ve got to let them dry. Or else you can count on the texture of your hair feeling like Mercury in Retrograde. This month, life’ll be a night disguised as moisturized lips, wet with pillow talk. Every time you reach for something, it’ll be paper towel. Prayer won’t work. If you learn waiting by waiting for the collapse of the moon, on the 18th, over brunch, water will not drip down the back of your neck. This is your time to turn yourself into one of those women who wait, forever and a day, til the bantu knots dry.

  WHEN I SAY I WANT A BABY, YOU SAY YOU MISS ME THAT MUCH TOO

  Let this letter find

  you well as I found your well,

  sullied and full, ill-timed

  ocean water

  on my tongue.

  Summer

  still feels like your head locked

  in my lap. Your bareness

  stepped out for a river run.

  The day you discovered the sun

  is a noun you can’t touch,

  I licked the mole on your cheek

  excited to make amends

  with a verb I can’t love.

  I watched you in winter

  unfold like a travelling tragedy;

  drunk, womb, memory,

  sunk, uncertainty.

  A body’s not just a body.

  What is surveillance if not

  a world where you are the man?

  You survey yet you don’t learn.

  I howl your name, a woman

  raised by wolves, inept were we.

  A soft fog dims

  all lights and chokes me. Please.

  THIS WON’T MAKE SENSE IN ENGLISH

  gudjadu adj. sprouted; bud; el éra nóba inda, ku se mama ~, she was still a virgin with her breasts sprouting

  Living single tongue not sweet enough yet still mourning Queen Latifah with the key around her neck

  SELF-PROCLAIMED SAD BOY

  Everyone I want to write to is dead.

  So I meet sad boy on the busy Internet streets,

  traffic covered in drunk people. Perhaps I can explain

  how they always come back to the house,

  like loose lies and friendly fires

  making vintage every Gchat.

  He was New York new.

  Crept up on me right before the beat dropped,

  immediately after I realized

  I conveniently live in a great place

  for a mental breakdown.

  We meet in Boston where I hide my face

  behind silent smoked sheets we fold together.

  I’m clenching the end.

  Sad boy quit me seven times

  after the smell of my whiskey damp tongue

  made a tattoo on his back.

  I want less from me and more for me.

  So I write another tiny letter,

  the matters of men who are not mine

  do not matter to me.

  I say sad boy being admired

  must be lonely IRL. In three bridges time,

  we drank our dinner, listened to Janet Jackson,

  Do you want this? Can you handle this?

  Do you want the war that comes

  with this skin? Well, come here then.

  RE THE DENTIST AND HIS NEW FAMILY

  Teeth person will not eat beef unless the mother cooks it.

  The I would like to say: Fuck your baby.

  Mother will cook beef if son buys it.

  A teeth person walks about the quad on what a person is

  suspected to walk upon.

  A person of teeth. Teeth own a person.

  I am doing well. I am having a baby.

  Some sets of teeth walk. Teeth person,

  I have had dreams about your baby. Teeth on carefully.

  I was once a baby, now, damaged goods, now, a dent in the

  corner of a $1,500 laptop, precious technology.

  Communicate a stain that would be refused by the local favorite

  dry cleaner.

  Teeth person taught me ruin.

  Exit without having entered.

  List what’s known about teeth person other than teeth person

  will not eat beef unless mother cooks it.

  Teeth person once walked upon, on, with tongue to say: I want

  an artist.

  The mirthful artist wonders,

  Did teeth person ever declare: I want a bank teller?

  Teeth, bank teller, baby.

  Show the I those teeth. Show the I that money.

  WELCOME BACK

  after Eth
eridge Knight

  Welcome back, Ms. B: Love of My Life—

  How’s your identity problem?—your culture

  problem? you / are / pickling

  your lesson—

  Gotta / watch / out

  for the “Ol’ Lesson”: Love of My Life.

  How’s your acid

  problem?—your weed, Adderall, Lexapro

  and Lithium too?—your lustful problem—

  How’s your weight problem—your eating

  problem? How’s your lying and cheating

  and staying out all / night long?

  Welcome back, Ms. B: Love of My Life.

  How’s your money / saved up / don’t know

  what to do with it problem? You quit—

  Your job problem. How’s your small breast

  problem?—your might buy some

  titties problem? How’s your Plan B?

  Welcome back, Ms. B: Love of My Life

  How’s your used to / write / that boy

  in jail / until he got shot & killed problem?

  How’s your stalker problem?—

  Your fucking too many in the crew?

  You don’t feel magic / ain’t never loved no one

  problem? How’s your book

  problem? / Ain’t been published /

  haven’t read your lover’s book problem?

  How’s your might go to Dominican Republic

  to fix your waist / what you sit on / put

  your / breasts in her & his mouth problem?

  The porn problem?

  Never let go / don’t love / don’t leave

  please need me problem? Your want to fuck

  everywhere but a bed / in the dark / problem?

  And your crushing pills / crushing dignity

  out of pity problem?

  How’s your drinking?—your thinking?

  You still paranoid? Still bipolar?

  Still scared shitless? Still wanna die?

  Welcome back, Ms. B: Love of My Life.

  How’s your language problem? Understand

  and won’t speak to save your

  grandmother’s heart problem?

  How’s your / everything is about pussy

  and race problem?—Your enough problem—

  You gotta watch out for the “Ol’ Lesson.”

  How’s your social network?

  Your / why / did / he / just / post

  a / photo / of / his / girlfriend / knowing

  I / would / see / it?

  Your unfollowing triggers?

  How’s your checking the last time / who

  he’s following / Why hasn’t he responded

  to your hateful, don’t mean it text messages

  problem? Your want to be a rapper problem?—

  Your back on the bed, against the wall

  on the pavement—just let it come / problem?

  Welcome back, Ms. B: Love of My Life.

  You gotta watch out for the “Ol’ Lesson.”

  STROLOGY VIRGO

  When he speaks of how wet Cape Verdean women get, tell him that’s the rain that never hits the land. The rain that never hits the land is despair. The rain that never hits the land is refuge. The rain that never hits the land is the sea anticipating cautious pregnant plants, planning the spark of an open mouth. Spend his birthday in Paris. Do not wish him well. Sweat and cigarette smoke and blisters tearing down your dancing body on the night of his day. Unaware unsettled, put un before it all. Before the weight of those black drums on a moving ship to Cape Verde, all those American ‘goods’ in search of recovery.

  FOREIGN SUMMER REMEMBERED IN TRAFFIC

  The goats inside the shed remember my shirt

  lifeless collapsed on the side of the pool.

  Here I am shedding empty casings

  on the hour before dawn.

  Other than the accent you place on my name

  I don’t understand a word from you.

  There is no old hat. There is no one I miss.

  What am I going to give

  the children I won’t have?

  If I could get rid of anything, it’d be traffic.

  I am open for you.

  I am open to deceit, at the Basilica

  you ask if skin and bone

  are just the shaping of trees.

  Sitting in traffic experiencing

  a lightshow of sun hitting

  leafless branches, hitting me

  as the bus goes down the highway.

  Here I am remembering the shed

  outside the pool where I learned

  in Kriolu, the word for condom

  is the same as a baby’s shirt.

  STROLOGY ARIES

  Forcing forget on a Saturday in September is how you arrive at the sea. To address the time of day would mean to reveal how time spends itself around. Sand dollars have no heart. Ask the doctor to get it in writing and faxed to the nearest machine: Sand Dollars Have No Heart. Are people the skeletons of the lives they create? Is your location determined by physical capability or you are where you are from the wash up? Aries, here is what you need to know: organisms of the sea cannot be repulsed by chipped toenail polish. Put your feet in. Walk in shallow oceans with suede sandals. Make skeleton picking your brave new hobby like gathering what’s left of things fallen while you bathe. In bed with yourself, terror shall leave no part unkissed.

  TONE’S POSTURE

  It’s true—he will not call

  no matter how close you place the phone to your breasts.

  He carries a large briefcase filled with affliction.

  If you don’t duck you’ll never learn that the wind is not failure.

  Be quick &

  you will still have time for dawn’s festivities.

  When your phone is on the floor he will flood, you

  will hear the melancholy in the back of his throat.

  You know better than to accompany the act, every time

  you think you spot him pulling up to the train station,

  bend down slowly, tie the wind’s shoes.

  He’ll miss your head when he actually comes,

  flaunting all that restrained equilibrium.

  FLUSH PAST THE FERRY

  Two brief girls or two turkey vultures came lurking

  on the bike route outside the church.

  A wedding is just a speck in Edgartown.

  To confess love while it’s under your nails

  is to confess I’ve been drinking tap water.

  It comes highly recommended.

  Two brief girls or two turkey vultures

  chase plastic into the ocean.

  High tide and destiny continue on.

  Don’t feel bad, the rest of the world still works.

  STROLOGY SAGITTARIUS

  Onions wouldn’t cut for you if you asked nicely. The way deer won’t voluntarily bleed on your lap. Imagine a deer hits you while en route to mass-produced cheesecake. Days do not ruin themselves, but whose day is ruined here? Mid-week, in the middle of primetime, the cable company cuts the wrong wire. Why isn’t that writer you’re fucking writing about you? Fancy yourself the small of his back. Squat the small of his island as you well up wet with every text message. No two arrive alike. Take the day’s juiced morning, blinds wide open and touch yourself toward his window (he finds this beautiful and pointless, but more beautiful). Reckon the ways you are never and always wrong. Now you’re both outside awaiting the technician, listening to each other miss visuals you’re too lazy to create.

  SOMETHING AFRICAN WITH A K

  In Virginia, years after, you got into gardening. Because you had lost your hair, you wanted to watch things grow. The baby you almost had would have set the table. You like to think of a girl because Tony said on the trolley back to his house that he would want to name her after his mother. But you thought her name was ugly. Despite your father being African, you thought the name was too African. But you love its American meaning. You never on
ce cooked for Tony in the dingy apartment overlooking the Boston skyline he shared with his brother. You think the baby would have been this tall girl who set the table, a girl named after her grandmother. Koshi. Kochi. Koshie. A silent letter anywhere, but you don’t remember because you said no. You told me you would call her Grace.

  GREAT GENERAL OF IMPOSSIBLE BATTLES

  The day I buried Bob

  you went bowling

  with a med student

  I used to advise

  on thrift store fashion.

  Called you 19 times

  wondered if she wore

  the overalls or clownish

  shapeless dress

  I told her, is, absolutely

  in this time

  of year when you are

  feeling like it’s time

  to walk around inside

  of your own freak

  show.

  Bob used to phone me

  dressed in worry. He’d

  heard I’d carried

  my mattress outside

  and slept in the dirt

  so you’d know

  I was ready

  for battle.

  You were not even home.

  On the phone for hours

  without mention of you

  I asked Bob how to know

  a good poem. He said,

  Where did the poet

  study writing?

  Where did the poet

  study fucking?

  You brought me

  to the thrift store

  after I first stayed

  the night.

  My clothes stained

  with confusion

  damp even,

  while I picked out

  a plaid polo shirt

  with silver buttons

  running everywhere.

  After I viewed the new

  Bob just lying there,

  I called you

  from my home phone.

  I still have a home phone.

  You answered

  on ring 20 but

  I needed more ringing.

  SOMEWHERE THERE’S A BABY ON THE LINE