Miscegenation Elegy

after Jericho Brown

.

Let’s talk through my window, what it has to do with God.

The stars also suffer. Immense and dead, their gasses burn 

distant like castanets of antebellum teeth. My open window 

a synecdoche of country. No matter how much smoke a pig 

roast won’t erupt into a song. How its head won’t find more 

careful music than this apple in my mouth. Pardon his sex, 

this apple erupts into violets. Historians archive our care

as an axe upon a ladybird. Air now through my window, 

what it has to do with Edith strolling away from me. You

see, I implant now not only a grandmother but a garden in

your tasteless heart. With just that name and its slant rhyme 

“Eden”, you hear “Gaia”. Have you heard a person bloom? 

In that garden, Edith’s lips hymn. Skyline maintains its mar.

The poem required sound from a body. The poem required 

meter heard by those trees. I gift a woman’s voice bottled  

so cleanly for you. Salt it. And coo admiringly with tongue. 

There were other names: Sogolon, Madhavi, ubume. Leda. 

Ariel. Hierarchy in how I love? Not violets, no— implant 

an ending: known for representing purity, white flowers are 

a neutral tone that accents any color. Camelia. Wisteria. Lust.