Kevin Young

To allow silence
To admit it in us

always moving
Just past
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HAVENT HEARD FROM YOU IN AGES STOP LOVE YOUR
LATEST SHOW STOP THIS NO PHONE STUFF IS FOR BIRDS
LIKE YOU STOP ONCE SHOUTED UP FROM STREET ONLY
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I am hoping
to hang your head
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Lady, won't you wait
out the hurricane
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The light here leaves you
lonely, fading
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Wake to find everything black
what was white, all the vice
versa—white maids on TV, black
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Praise the restless beds
Praise the beds that do not adjust
that won't lift the head to feed
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The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
—Bob Dylan
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After Independence Day
all our toys began to tear
up, school growing sweet
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Back there then I lived
across the street from a home
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Crashing
again—Basquiat
sends fenders
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is music is men
off early from work is waiting
for the chance at the chair
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Waking early
with the warming house
my grandmother knew what to do
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There's a way a woman
will not
relinquish
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RUN AWAY from this sub-
scriber for the second time
are TWO NEGROES, viz. SMART,
an outlandish dark fellow
...