American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

by Terrance Hayes

I mean to leave A record of my raptures.

like a riverbed branching Into tributaries like lines of rapturous sentences Searching for a period.

The bones managing the body’s business are cloaked Until you assassinate my nigga flesh.

You assassinate my tongue Which is like the head of a turtle wearing my skull for a shell.

Seeks dime ass trill bitch starved enough to hang Doo-ragged in smoke she can smell & therefore inhale And therefore feel.

You know how when the light you splatter spreads Across her back like wings tattooed elaborately one evening In an ink-shop beside a river,

The son can almost see how he might Become superb as the scar above a wound.

Because a law was passed that said there was no worth To adjectives, companies began stringing superlatives Before unchanged products manufactured by men Who know how to make money, but nothing else.

Alive is a kenning For the electrified. I thought we might sing Of the wire wound round the wound of feeling.

Can you guess what black Folk passing empty cotton fields feel, George Wallace? I damn you with the opposite of that feeling.

As if the nuzzle Of a bullet can’t poke a hole in your breath.

My answer is, A brother has to know how to time travel & doctor Himself when a knee or shoe stalls against his neck.

The orchid’s Mouth is the shade of pussy, its leaves hang As if listening to a lover whisper with her back To you.