American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

by Terrance Hayes

His manic drawing became a kind of writing when he sent His beloved a sketch of an eye with an X struck through it. He meant I am blind without you. She thought he meant I never want to see you again. It is possible he meant that, too.

Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between Pleasure & disgust.

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.

It is not enough To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

I pour a pinch of serious poison for you James Earl Ray Dylann Roof

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

Black as tarnation, black as the consciousness Of a black president’s wife, black as his black tie Tuxedo beside his black wife in room after room Of whiteness.

I love how your blackness leaves them in the dark. I love how even your sound-bite leaves a mark.

We’re on the middle floor where the darkness We bury is equal to the lightness we intend.

Goddamn, so this is what it means to have a leader You despise, the racists said when the president Was black and I’ll be damned if I ain’t saying it too.

Probably all our encounters are existential Jambalaya.

Unbelievably, Miles Davis & John Coltrane Standing within inches of each other didn’t explode.

A funky rumble over air. The umpteenth slump In our humming democracy, a bumble bureaucracy

Prince taught us a real man has A beautiful woman in him.

It’s not the bad people who are brave I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.

Assassin, you are a mystery To me, I say to my reflection sometimes. You are beautiful because of your sadness, but You would be more beautiful without your fear.

Fear of boredom is ideal. Fear of dereliction is okay.

It was discovered the best way to combat Sadness was to make your sadness a door.

My problem was I’d decided to make myself A poem.