1.
“Walking in circles
“More than a century
“Round and round
“Round and round
“Wearing out the grass
“Crazy in my heart
“Crazy in my head
“Roasting
“While love turns the spit
“To dote on such a bubble ...
“Now - nothing but tears"
Outside the window: crow’s laughter
Inside the room: Joy’s lovely head
I read her this draft
“‘To dote on such a bubble ...’”
“I like it,” she says
Sliding closer on the couch
“But it’s sad ...”
2.
She works on a piece
For the Par’bo Citoyen
I translate
From the Anthologie
Click click click
Click click click
3.
After two glasses of rum
Chin tends to make speeches
We’ve taken to calling him Senator
“Yes, Senator”
“No, Senator”
“Whatever you say, Senator”
He draws himself up then
To his full five feet four
“The Senator will recite a few poems now
“Your poems, you rhymin’ bastard”
What happens next
Would have made Zurich Dada proud
Grunts
Moans
Whistles
Screeches
Table-pounding with both fists
It’s been known to silence Vive la République Heaven
In seconds
4.
Lips ...
Nipples ...
Bellies ...
Thighs ...
“You're mine
“I’m yours,” she says
I’m supposed to be cool
And postmodern
But this is heaven
5.
Joy’s writing a book
The Pornography of Global Power
“You can’t kill the beast,” she says
“Cut off one head
“A hundred more will grow
“But you can’t be silent, either”
6.
“I have a place on South Mountain
“It’s just a little shack
“A spider lives in the window
“It hangs upside down in a web of light”
“Can I come visit?” she asks
Then laughs
Then kisses the top of my head
“O beautiful head,” she says
“O beautiful head,” I say
I toss Chaucer at her
“Your yen two wol slee me sodenly
“I may the beautee of hem not sustene”
“Did I tell you Katibo Vert called?” she asks
“If they win the election
“They want me in their government”
I go to the bedroom
Bring back her shoes
“These boots are made for walkin’
“O Most Important Personage
“Dinner’s on me”
7.
Just off Place de ‘40
Is a bar called Rifles
The old revolutionaries
Who can still get about
Drink there
Once a month
Joy brings flowers
From Paradise Gardens
“It’s a granddaughter’s rage
“Against the dying of their light,” she says
Her grandfather is a kindly old gent
Known as the Assassin
“I was a corporal in the Apes,” he says
“They called us apes
“So we were Apes
“They called us clowns
“So we were Clowns
“See that man in the corner
“Drinking the Par’bo Gold?
“He led the Clowns by secret paths
“Through the hills behind Pointes Noires
“We caught the Caludans in a crossfire
“I don’t like to remember
“What I saw that day”
He shrugged
As he must have shrugged a thousand times
“But you do what you have to”
8.
I watch the sky grow dark
And the full moon rise
From behind the old stone wall
At the back of the garden
I tell the first star I see
“I love her”
9.
Joy reads me a section
Of Pornography of Global Power
A collection of fragments
Modeled on Benjamin’s Passagenwerk
She calls it “Who Needs Adjectives?”
It includes descriptions of tire fires
(“Eternal flames,” I call them
“Remember,” she says
“No adjectives!”)
Statistics on Third World
Bottlefed-instead-of-breastmilk babies
That die each year
(“I know, I know …
“No adjectives!”)
And so on
And so on
And scooby dooby doo-bee ...
“Paradis terrestre,” I say
She says, “I depress myself
“Let’s go outside
“And sit in the garden”
10.
Joy, the Assassin and I
Attend the opening of Les Katiboises
Donald Evans’ portrait heads
Of “the women of proud young Katibo
“Who set themselves free”
I continue to quote the placard
On the entrance wall:
“He made three series
“At three different periods
“Of the same seven heads
“The first president’s wife
“A tribal chieftess
“A university student
“Two rural women
“A Par’bo patrician
“The new polyclinic’s physician
“Each series has its own wall”
“I’m 85 years old,” says the Assassin
“I’m supposed to be done with love
“But my word, they’re all so beautiful
“It drives me crazy
“And it will til the day I die”
“My word,” he says again
Stopping in front of the portrait
Of one of the rural women
“I believe I knew her
“What was her name?”
Later that night
I watch Joy sleep
I watch dreams dance
Behind her eyes
I think the same thought
Over and over
“O beautiful head
“I’ll dote a while
“You are the answer
“To all my questions”
[Note: “Walking in circles” and “I have a place on South Mountain” are translations of anonymous poems from the Anthologie de la poesie de Katibo (Paris: Noirs Noires, 1974)]