Poetry

In the great Archaeological Museum of Naples, 
I visited Flora—force 
behind everything that flowers—a fresco 

Something quick and wet on my neck.
I whipped around, and right behind me
in the lunch line: Mary-Arkansas Greene,

No tide pools, no couples on the beach
where my parents met,

only whitecaps bowing and lifting,
until each blurs into itself.

[…]

Within the hush of birch medallions, 
fir fingers, wild scallions—
that company of dancers held 

Channel, brook, stream—call it a river
that flows past the hospital
in different shades and seasons of blue,

Metrophobia
I, too dislike it, or at least I find
too much of it bromidic and unrhymed,

Above me in the night
My unknown neighbors walk 
Across a creaking floor

John, you asked me what it was like to be black,
to come from a place where being black mattered.

In the halls of Pigalle, juxtaposition is not intimacy. 
Moulin Rouge Moulin Rouge Moulin
Red—Louise the Glutton spread high in her kick, 

I once believed in heavenly clarity—
do you know how good it feels to sing
of certainty, the wild apricot