white stone leaning on a black stone

on this day in history, what i was is already dead.
an ancient evil rises, poseidon-like,
over my head and swallows all my
wandering waves of hair. the power that i had!
when i sang, the argonauts sank their ship.

evil breaches my doorway, an idea older than chronos:
the spartan slave who makes the bed
that the athenian citizen has to lie in.

oh, all the things i could have been,
if left to bear only this child and not this pain:
i am old, i am worn, i am grey, and my skin
grows dry with every passing midnight.
(what is it to mourn your own youth?)
i am a raging, sighing daughter of the earth.
when i sang, odysseus tore his flesh for me.

and this day, this morning, when you and i come in together,
is also known as a sunday: a day in cold midwinter that
does nothing, says nothing, is nothing.
your hand on mine, what does it signify?
we cross borders every day, you and i,
and it is in these crossings that i learned to love you.
i wonder where our feet will go tomorrow.

the rocks we kick across the neighborhood sidewalk,
the pebbles we flick between imaginary goalposts,
the stones falling out of our pockets after we lounge on the beach:
underfoot and in between our toes and
rough against the grain of our skins,

i don't like the colors of the rocks
because they do not mix.

maybe after years of pressure from the earth,
maybe after eons of hot hot heat,
maybe after my inheritance is taken away
(the blood inheritance, the flesh inheritance:
my name, my body, my story)
maybe after there exists a gorgeous brown little boy
who is an anagram of father and mother,
maybe after all the civilizations fall
one by one, like repentant children with evaporating dreams—
my tired, aching song. all the change is gone.
the words are old, the methods ancient;
i could never sink a modern crew now
the way i sank the argonauts then.
for weeks i have been dousing my vocal cords in
lemon acerbity, alcoholic sting,
the persuasiveness of tasting someone else’s mouth.

the old evil rises again, enters my doorway
and sits down for tea. he sits, sycophantic, with
his knees tucked into his chest:
he is one color, one mind, one old old hate.
and this tea, on this sunday, is accompanied by my voice
pleading for reason, pleading for the power of
blood over sight: because we all run red when injured,
and today i am dressed in wounds and gore.

and this sunday, next september, every sundown,
these are my witnesses. these, and the words of my son
who is not yet born, and the blood that leaches
power out of the old evil:
when i sing, racism hums in bitter discord.
when i sing, color rakes lines across my flesh.
when i sing, all the granite and phosphate and limestone
and sandstone and obsidian of the world
rise out of the earth and run together
in one great conglomerate feast;
and my little boy kicks in my womb.