MANESOLOGY

Douglas Kearney's contribution to the Provocations series, in conjunction with UCI’s “Who Do We Think We Are” conference.

By Douglas KearneyJanuary 25, 2018

—after Charlottesville but before it, too, shit

They called me to speak on the problem

& told me I could from my home

where children’s crayons & software

are riots of color & murmurs.

Sometimes my hours spent as days

of spinning my head from years & eras

just all the time

in tombstone columns. Look:

I’d speak on the problem.

I do. N & I

had happened was misgiving it

as ours in our home,

we nicked & dug at it that night,

all the while reckoning us as spading

at what’s ours until we knew what we could do,

then kissed a while

(this looks like crying when

your mouth is your skin).

The problem, though,

had our numbers, our children’s

good shoes are made of cinders,

the pairs stay everywhere they go

even when they haven’t been,

since it, the problem’s

what we must do/have done’s

the problem, I said

I been saying. Like I gots to tote some sick hearts

on my back, a gurney—

or my blood a soap for dirt

their shit made into

ours. N said: that’s why the nerves,

the kind of what she say

but that’s just what I’m saying is

after this problem we made love.

& that’s somebody’s problem,

over there.

We were at it, our backs ours,

& as though magic

those tombstones slanted to appear a ward

(view’s skewed thus when your standing’s

to be prone).

I say:

must I speak on their problem,

that when we’re our, making love is it

Poor interviewer’d chew the detour of their invisible tongue

& the spit they’d spit, too,

would be so clear

so/yet thirsty, I speak on.

A problem:

night after that instance,

my daughter clambers

our bed for half the night, after

reading about ghosts.

My son, though, slept,

a babe, under blades,

fan spinning back to where it started

& to where

&

For the Provocations series, in conjunction with UCI’s “Who Do We Think We Are” conference.