American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

by Terrance Hayes

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.

The names alive are like the names In graves.

I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold While your better selves watch from the bleachers.

Yes, even the most Bespectacled hallucination cruising the lanes Of America may find her tongue curls inward, Entangling her windpipe, her vents, toes & pedals When she drives alone.

After that, what is inward, is absorbed.

Still, I speak for the dead. You will never assassinate my ghosts.

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

Christianity is a religion built around a father Who does not rescue his son. It is the story Of a son whose father is a ghost.

Like no Culture before us, we relate the way the descendants Of the raped relate to the descendants of their rapists. May your restlessness come at last to rest, constituents Of Midas. I wish you the opposite of what Neruda said Of lemons. May all the gold you touch burn, rot & rust.

As if what you learn making love to yourself matters More than what you learn when loving someone else.

This country is mine as much as an orphan’s house is his.