Roger Reeves

                     It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world
                     The body in flames will not be the body
In flames but just a house fire ignored
                     The black sails of that solitary burning
Boat rubbing along the legs of lovers
                     Flung into a Roman sky by a carousel
The lovers too sick in their love
                     To notice a man drenched in fire on a porch
Or a child aflame mistaken for a dog
                     Mistaken for a child running to tell of a bomb
That did not knock before it entered
                     In Gaza with its glad tidings of abundant joy
In Kazimierz a god is weeping
                     In a window one golden hand raised
Above his head as if he’s slipped
                     On the slick rag of the future our human
Kindnesses unremarkable as the flies
                     Rubbing their legs together while standing
On a slice of cantaloupe Children
                     You were never meant to be human
You must be the grass
                     You must grow wildly over the graves

All lions must lean into something other than a roar:

James Baldwin, for instance, singing Precious Lord,

His voice as weary as water broken over his scalp

In a storefront Sanctified Church’s baptismal pool

All those years ago when he wanted to be

Somebody’s child and on fire in that being. Lord,

I want to be somebody’s child and chosen

Water spilling over their scalp, water

Taking the shape of their longing, a deer

Diving into evening traffic and the furrow drawn

In the air over the hood of the car—power

And wanting to be something alive and open.

Lord, I want to be alive and open,

A glimpse of power: the shuffle of a mother’s hand

Over a sleeping child’s forehead

As if clearing the city’s rust from its face

Which we mostly are: a halo of rust,

A glimpse of power—James Baldwin leaning

Into the word light, his voice jostling that single grain

In his throat as if he might drop it or

Already has. I am calling to that grain

Of light, to that gap between his teeth

Where the many-of-us fatherless sleep

And bear and be whatever darkness or leaping

Thing we can be. In James Baldwin’s mouth,

My difficult beauty, my weak and worn,

My future as any number of angels,

Which is not unlike the beast, Grendel,

Coming out of the wild heaven into the hills

And halls of the mead house at the harpist’s call

With absolute prophecy in his breast

And a desire for mercy, for a friend, an end

To drifting in loneliness, and in that coming

Down out of the hills, out of the trees, for once,

Bringing humans the best vision of themselves,

Which, of course, must be slaughtered.

Alice Coltrane, her harp, fills in the cracks of me

With gold. The Japanese call it Kintsugi.

Where the vessel broken, only gold will permit

Its healing. Its history. It’s How the Stars Understand

Us, lemon flowers on the skin of the earth,

Mosquito filled with the blood that sirens its fat,

Long life. Who isn’t dying to leave this house,

To go masked only in the shadow of one’s animal-

Breathing, lonesome, unprotected, knowing

Nothing lives as foreignness or death,

That the black dog with the sword in his mouth

Passing from house to house will not bring its itch,

Its ticks and locks clogging our lungs, a permanent

Quarantine—nothing that a little gold

Melted to ichor and spilled into the veins

Won’t seam. Everything is a blue divergence

On a harp, the red bells in the purple

Crepe myrtle this morning forgetting

That soon they will be the corpses the spring

Tree kneels to observe. No, no, they remember,

As everything dying remembers its mother’s

Name. Say your mother’s name. Not for power

But for the glimpse of power, to be more

Than a hesitation, gold filling in the cracks,

A window thrown open for no other reason

Than to continue a blue feeling, nothing

Needed other than this devotion to darkness,

A Fire Gotten Brighter, my daughter holding

My small name in her mouth, light-broken

Beloved, my daughter—a window thrown

Open—her voice, gold filling in the cracked

Basketball court of me, announcing all

Nature, all nature will be dead for life soon.