Sonnet for Black Girls (and another poem)
by Paul Chuks
blackness is next to Godliness.
her body, the mother of night; of several gods,
her hair, the origin of vegetation, her eyes draw colors from chandeliers, each reflect
a perfect world; a memory of ancestors, once dirges
in a bank of water; once warriors against invaders
who undid her sons; her countries.
yet she has been so deceived to mistake
her body for only a martyred thing. when
it is the mosaic of beauty. they killed jesus &
started a religion; they killed her, the history of humanity,
both of those who smelled of incense and those
who ingested it emerged from her. she seats like a love song
in the mouth of a dove. i love her because if I don’t,
something in the world would be missing.
***
Insomnia
the day begins
with thanksgiving,
the oration of lust on dreams and desires.
by dusk
a body made of dust and music
will be ritual for a nocturnal god. by dusk how much blood
will this body consume?
some days ago, a diviner mistook my body
for a holy grail.
not even birds should
answer for the songs in their mouth.
not even lovers should
answer for the sins of their tongues.
behold, man is charred inwardly from
the pages of his nightmares.
that night, someone whose gift was sorcery, prayed
before sundown &
silence took the face of a small god whose time clicked
anti-clockwise—keeping day as dawn.
whose god is this?
the one whose rites are feasts of bread & wine
& slumber. or the one whose name is a paradox happening elsewhere.
sequel to the ritual, it follows that:
the body becomes the god, the god becomes the boy &
the boy becomes the night.
