Yusef Komunyakaa's Thorn Merchant Poems. There are couple more than this--I think a son and a daughter poem, which are also lovely. Here is The Thorn Merchant, The Thorn Merchant's Wife and The Thorn Merchant's Mistress. Komunyakaa is, well, a bad ass. This is my favorite book from him. But almost all of his stuff is just killer. We'll talk in the afternoon.
UPDATE: Comments open guys. I have one thing to say:
Ready to auction off his hands
to the highest bidder,
he knows how death waits
in us like a light switch.
Beautiful.
[MORE]
The Thorn Merchant
There are teeth marks
on everything he loves.
When he enters the long room
more solemn than a threadbare Joseph coat,
the Minister of Hard Knocks & Golden Keys
begins to shuffle his feet.
The ink on contracts disappears.
Another stool pigeon leans
over a wrought-iron balcony.
Blood money's at work.
While men in black wetsuits
drag Blue Lake, his hands dally
at the hem of his daughter's skirt.
In the brain's shooting gallery
he goes down real slow.
His heart suspended in a mirror,
shadow of a crow over a lake.
With his fingers around his throat
he moans like a statue
of straw on a hillside.
Ready to auction off his hands
to the highest bidder,
he knows how death waits
in us like a light switch.
And:
The Thorn Merchant's Wife
She meditates on how rocks rise
inBluebird Canyon , how hills
tremble as she makes love
to herself, how memories drift
& nod like belladonna
kissing the ground.
She remembers the first time, there
in his flashy two-tone Buick.
That night she was a big smile
in the moon's brokendown alley.
When she became the Madonna of Closed Eyes
nightmares bandaged each other
with old alibis & surgical gauze,
that red dress he fell for
turned to ghost cloth
in some bagwoman's wardrobe.
She thinks about the gardener's son.
But those black-haired hours only lasted
till the shake dancer's daughter
got into his blood & he grew sober --
before solitaire began to steal
her nights, stringing an opus
of worry beads, before Morphine
leaned into the gold frame.
And
I was on my high
horse then. I
wore red with ease
& I knew how
to walk. There
were men undressing me
everywhere I went,
& women wishing
themselves in my place,
a swan unfractured
by August. I was still
a girl. If they
wanted culture,
I said Vivaldi
& Plato's Cave.
If they wanted
the streets, I said
Fuck you.
I knew how
to plead, Wait, Wait,
till I caught the eye
of some deus
ex machina.
I was in a deep dance
pulling the hidden
strings of nude
shadows. But when
his car drove by
my heart caught
like a fat moth
in spider web. Goddamn!
I didn't know
how to say No.
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