Selected Works, upfromsumdirt

 

So, To Speak

oceans of thought 

slosh as i am walking

so, to speak 

is to swallow rapids 

and not even noah 

wants these waters

i can not save you if you drown

i will only watch embedded safely 

on shore like an asperous stone-faced 

god chin-deep in the sands—a toothless 

guardian of old with striated songs

…

a jellyfish village 

sloshes 

in my head and 

i awaken violently

like a captive in various stages 

of escape staked as phantasmagoric 

bait near the volcanic rim—i dare 

not lay my head or close my eyes

this fear

of dreams 

with nascent 

affiliation

to the newly 

unknown.

The Ode of Carbon-Copy Anubis

the werewolf with 

the rose tattoo hides

up the holler 

in her mouth—incisors 

down to the bone—my hand,

holding a silver sliver

by its onyx hilt…

she is covered in honey 

(canines guiding calluses)

writing poems of song & roses

jabbing knife’s point 

into Olodumare’s 

inkblack underbelly:

a mobius strip 

of wristblood & 

underbelly blood

all the while, i sit at her side

shooing away bees & howling 

at the moon, my body 

a distant broken planet.

statue of black poet replaces statue of white hero from a not-so-distant race war but neither monument ever held the pigeons at bay and never did the pigeons give a fuck: merry-go-round as political theater

1. 

i am cast in marble in this poem

twenty feet fall standing napoleon-style 

atop a triumph, a thruxton to be correct, 

“i am a cowboy in the boat of ra” tatted 

on my back—unseen, for i wear a billowing 

dress shirt and i do not have on a backwards 

ball cap in this statue. 

in this statue i am black in white marble 

marbled lightly with blue—like good cheese 

tho i am not as salty; head tossed back 

in laughter with neither head nor laugh 

attached to a body for the neck is missing 

—surreal as it is serene; meanwhile, 

in open secret the shoulder-sitting pigeons, 

always in a state of shitting, remain vigilant, 

insider trading as they go about 

in cooing communication on where to find

the best location for popcorn & breadcrumbs 

with the least amount of competition

you see, this black poem is not about race.

this is about american heritage (except 

for the british motorcycle mentioned above, 

culturally balanced at the statue’s base 

by 3 distinct emojis that change daily, but still): 

a riveting contemporary likeness

2. 

“why no neck?” questions the whitest 

of critics for whom unblemished marble 

was made artismal, as sacrosanc as a birthright; 

“if this, as you say, is about culture then why no place 

below the headless head to hold a proper lynch? 

your black poems are all a lie. please, leave us.”

 

3. 

you see, this cord of rope, from the very start,

is a white poem about resistance & representation.

AS IS

the unbeknownst rhythms 

from reanimated tongues

are often hashtagged 

as “the droning on of the heavyhanded” 

within some outdated owner’s manual

the library of stitches in our chest 

deemed an inconsequence 

because our wounds—to some—were 

not so recent and were simply canonized 

as the droning on of mules—or in cozier 

post-production: the goddamn melodies 

of niggardly maladroits decomposing

but that secret is told slant

for when the make of any popular model 

is discountinued, it’s utterly useless (as is well-known)

to update an outdated owner’s manual.

it’s best, by then,

to burn the gravures

and begin anew.

Abolition Is A Form Of Lycanthropy

i stumble into a poem i want to write where a child 

is eating a wolf / i’m concerned for the child, if only 

for a second, so i say “say child, just how did you 

come to, uhh, be eating this wolf?” of course, 

the wolf of is dead with its wide, weary eyes

“say child, this wolf didn’t just, uhh, roll up & deliver 

itself fully plated, so what work of delivery app is this?”

the child (blood on his or her hands, blood dripping from

his or her lips, bites through a bloodied, pelted paunch)

grunts and crouches closer, guarding her or his conquest

the child, snarled in sanguined symmetry, growls at me

hands up i back away

in the periphery of this poem, the wolf-devouring 

eyes of forest urchin sparkle in the surrounding dark, 

dozens upon dozens—tiny gems of slight inquiry reflect 

my impending genocide… then a child in the distance 

child-howls like a half-eaten wolf… branches crack 

in the not-so-distant dark…unless it’s my dry brittle bones 

snapping like branches, every unpruned bough of this 

poem a newly minted metaphor for bone marrow

—my application for a national prize complete

feet up, the dead wolf’s paws begin to cycle

drawing circles in the air at a quickening pace, 

a dead end dreaming of escape… longing for 

the run; the hunt; to feed itself the hand it bites…

“blood-streaked child, i do not have the time for this;

goddammit, i don’t even recall coming to these woods!”

with blood in his or his teeth, she, the snarl-bodied child 

is smiling; leader of the fucking pack but who’s behind it:

capitalistic abolitonists? representational patriarchy? elevator 

pitch for under-funded sci-fi? neoliberal art journals financed 

by conservatives? this modern avant-gardism just isn’t for me: 

merwin and dickinson are the child; i, the half-eaten wolf.

i awoke this morning hungry for figs

and a simple draught of honey for my tea.

the shoes of the fisherman’s wife might be some jive ass slippers but her nightgown is a fishnet

my fingers drop anchor drop into the sea of you

each knuckle joint below your turbulent crest / each knuckle

a kraken, an at-earth’s-end dragon, rattling the bones of atlantis

sunken in songs soft and seismic

each finger an anchor and i am moored to how your flotsum foams

four of your twice-four tentacles thrashing  the octopus that 

at last  discovers

in undulation  flight  

each wave full of salt and thunder and your own two lungs 

thrown as wide as single sail to the wind  mending the nets.

upfromsumdirt is the author of four chapbooks and the full-length collection, Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020) available through gumroad.com/ upfromsumdirt. He is a 2010 winner of Kentucky’s Al Smith Award for Art (as Ronald Davis), whose visual work has graced the covers of The African American Review, Tidal Basin Review, Mythium Literary Journal, and various book covers for a variety of published authors. You can view his portfolio at upfromsumdirt.com, and if so moved you can find him across the spectrum of social media sites.