She, Lazarus,
back from the dead,
with a musical vengeance—
A beat, Christ, please,
she asks of her martyred D.J.,
half-light, half-man,
and out climbs her voice, grinding
through rubble, a dark velvet toy
wound up for centuries, released,
on behalf of every last blue girl, unannounced,
notes from underground
unfurling a cortege of white ribbons,
grace lost
now found
among trespasses.
And on the eighth day
she was diagnosed an Artist,
and saw that it was good
and fierce and necessary,
and went forth creating
like a madwoman,
rattling gravity shackles
to the din of furor
and crumbling towers
within.
(Poem from the collection, Arclight.)
We are
immigrants in our own skin,
flash-fire refugees
who get by with falsified papers,
fake IDs, and forged signatures.
If caught and found guilty
of a trespass
or transgression,
we pardon ourselves
in our native tongues,
language a placeholder
for the names
we were forced
to annul.
(Poem from the collection, Arclight.)
I do not want to see
the face of God.
I want to see her mask,
where
and for whom it cracked,
the causal history of lines and fissures;
want to trace,
with blind mute innocence,
the light quartered and drawn
in Braille, its grooves holding,
without strain or regret,
Mercy’s hidden inheritance.
