AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS MUCH ADU ABOUT NOTHING
“Didn’t I tell you what I believe,
didn’t I say that . . .”
Sade
Ifemi, how many REM cycles
since your love leaped
the ravine of No Return
to open me as a sommelier
would a wine bottle,
since the bright crescents
of my nails waxed across
the black sky of your back,
since the saxophone
signaled tomorrow?
Learnèd astrologer
I found your love
amidst a constellation
of mercurial lips
glossy enough
to lapse all logic,
& unlike logic
you bid me crave
the crow-colored tresses
of what many pray
to be saved from.
Freckled cheeks of Jesus,
who can tell how many
calligraphic kisses
could be needed to spell
or dispel what butterflies
write in rooms filled
with strawberry irises.
It’s been written
—sense the saxophone
signal’s sorrow,
a fool for roses
is a fool for rain—
but how to uproot
the twin legends
of your legs
blooming into heels
stiletto enough
to fell a forest entire?
Ifemi, I found your love
both freed and fried
as the symbols inside
a theorem derived
from four types of feral.
Yet not symbols & not derived.
Scents the saxophone
signals borrowed—
let’s not wrestle
with how you left me
or the difference between
a half wound and what
wound up happening.
Or what it could mean
to remain untethered
by an ankle tattoo’s
brassy passion
for adinkra charms
and police bracelets.
Perhaps I hummed
the wrong songs
with the right lyrics
or the right songs
with the wrong lyrics,
but how many dawns
found your love
hung over the railing
of Old Crow moans
or sizzling unstrung
between a first flame of bud
& one last good buy?
And how many more
need spot me flitting
like a Leopard moth
around a porch light,
turning to unlock
a mystery like magnetism
with keys hidden under
the tea rose carpet
of another woman’s tongue?
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