YUSEF
KOMUNYAKAA
NEW AND
SELECTED POEMS
Wesleyan University Press / Middletown, Connecticut
Published by Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, CT 06459
Copyright © 1993 by Yusef Komunyakaa
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Originally produced in 1993 by
Wesleyan/University Press of New England
Hanover, NH 03755
The “New Poems” appeared in the following
magazines: Callaloo, Indiana Arts, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Louisville Review, Mid-American Review, Ploughshares, Red Dirt,River Styx, and The Southern Review.
Dedications & Other Darkhorses, Rocky Mountain Creative Arts Journal, 1977; included by permission. Lost in the Bonewheel Factory, Lynx House Press, 1979; included by permission. Copacetic, Wesleyan University Press, 1984; included by permission. Toys in a Field, Black River Press, 1986; included by permission. I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Wesleyan University Press, 1986; included by permission. Dien Cai Dau, Wesleyan University Press, 1988; included by permission. February in Sydney, Matchbooks, 1989; included by permission.
Front cover illustration, Uptown Looking Downtown, by Romare Bearden. Estate of Romare Bearden, courtesy of ACA Galleries, New York, NY.
In memory of my grandmother, Mary,and my father, J. W.
Contents
Fever 24
Little Man Around the House 27
Songs for My Father 28
from Dedications & Other Darkhorses
The Tongue Is 37
Chair Gallows 38
Translating Footsteps 39
from Lost in the Bonewheel Factory
Looking a Mad Dog Dead in the Eyes 43
1938 44
Stepfather: A Girl’s Song 45
Apprenticeship 46
Light on the Subject 47
Beg Song 48
Passions 49
The Dog Act 51
For You, Sweetheart, I’ll Sell Plutonium Reactors 52
The Nazi Doll 53
Corrigenda 54
False Leads 57
Soliloquy: Man Talking to a Mirror 58
The Way the Cards Fall 59
Annabelle 60
Faith Healer 61
More Girl Than Boy 62
April Fools’ Day 63
Untitled Blues 64
Back Then 65
Blasphemy 66
Safe Subjects 67
Black String of Days 69
Villon / Leadbelly 70
Elegy for Thelonious 71
Copacetic Mingus 72
Letter to Bob Kaufman 73
Woman, I Got the Blues 74
Newport Beach, 1979 75
Gloria’s Clues 76
Charmed 77
The Cage Walker 78
Addendum 79
Epilogue to the Opera of Dead on Arrival 80
Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival 81
from I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head
Unnatural State of the Unicorn 87
Touch-up Man 88
How I See Things 89
The Thorn Merchant 90
The Thorn Merchant’s Right-Hand Man 91
The Heart’s Graveyard Shift 92
Boy Wearing a Dead Man’s Clothes 94
The Music That Hurts 96
When in Rome—Apologia 97
The Thorn Merchant’s Wife 99
The Thorn Merchant’s Mistress 100
After Summer Fell Apart 102
The Brain to the Heart 104
Audacity of the Lower Gods