X

As you are both Malcolm's
shadow & the black unknown
he died defending, I praise

your untold potential, the possible
worlds you hold within your body's
bladed frame. I love how you stand

in exultation, arms raised
to welcome the rain, the bolt,
whatever drops from the sky's slick shelf

without warning, as all plagues
do. Miracles too. & bombs that fall
from planes which hold men with eyes

aimed through long glass tubes. Tubes
that make a civilian's life look small.
Small enough to smoke. X marks the cross

-hairs, & the home an explosion turns to blur.
X marks the box on the form that bought
the bombs, paid the trigger man, sent

the senator's son off to school
without a drop of blood to temper
his smile, stain leather

boots, mar the occasion.
X: every algorithm's heart
-beat, how any & all adjacent

quantities bloom. A kiss.
How a signature knows
where to begin its looping

dance. Two hands balled
into fists, crossed
at the wrist, repping

the borough that gave
us b-boys, the Yankees,
my mother's left

hook, swift enough
to knock any living
thing off its feet

like a cartoon villain
bested by banana peel
or spilled oil, his eyes

now two black x's,
denoting absence.
The wrong answer

on a test. How
my great-great
grandfather,

who could not read,
rendered his name,
as if an homage

to his own opacity,
as if to say, I contain
the unthinkable, or, I abstain.





From The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016). All rights reserved. Reprinted courtesy of the author.