Twenty Six

When my well lay dry I met a girl from Christian Science

On the streets of Dominicaville where the boys buy a thrill

Watched her Chelsea marionette long legs redheaded Edie

Quarter past coquette androgynous doll oh how hot this city

Burnt umber skin legendary women of poverty glow within

From St. Nicholas onward brown bombshells Paquito’s well

She tripped up along sidewalks neighborhood bodega queens

White sister sashay put to shame this low income housing

Along these stairs much violence have come before then

Whistles in night green air gang-rape gambling at all hours

Inside this room sparkled doom her words ignite holier light

If beauty were lollipop I’d drink champagne glass lemonade

Raise the heavens from her heart ravish bones from flesh

Through these moments spent bent on spiritual philosophy

I pay attention - become overwhelmed by desire yet I resist

It’s with respect I listen and imbibe essentially relinquish

Submit all I was forsaken power I possessed hereby gone

For what a blessing from a nymph my Friday night romp

What body did I have left certainly none existed below

Didn’t know if a push out the door consummate on floor

Somehow I still felt much needed passion cry for more

Couldn’t commit at best meaningless hug throat parched

Along avenues wolves did prey eyes venomous pale limbs

Collapsed warm beer tongue hand’s throb begged for God

Twenty Five

                                                 

Cigalit

                                     

                                                    Kofi Fosu Forson

When I was young, boys rolled stockings up and around my thighs. Soon after, they joined the army. We were never the same. Roadside bombings were a common thing. We watched as tourists came to see The Holy Land.

Here on Christopher Street, I can hardly lift a pen to write the word “tit.” The smell of summer makes me sick. I usually go swimming in the Bronx. My grandparents live there. “We are good to our people,” they always say. They give me money in the thousands. I must say, we are good to our own people.

I love sleeping in the nude, especially in the summer. I lie there, feeling the beads of sweat form in some unusual places on my body. I live with a friend. We exchange similar stories about escaping gun fire.

Across the street, the buffed boys in tank tops argue through the night. The sound of it..? It’s violent. My roommate and I would start gossiping about men. I like aggressive men. Doing it is all about aggression. Once I get beyond foreplay, all I want to do is bite, scratch and hit.

So why then did I fall for a poet? They see with their hearts, think with their minds. Men don’t think with their minds. He came on wanting to light my cigarette. I usually don’t smoke. I take out a cigarette when I want attention. And of course I don’t have a light. So he was doing pretty good so far.

I had him come over. It’s funny, isn’t it? I was sitting there, thinking of a million ways to do one thing. I made a tiny move and he was on top of me. Animals get this way, like they want to strangle their victim. I didn’t give him any but he sure kissed good.

How do I say this? “Doing it…” I don’t believe in it. At least not the way most people do it. The whole thing about taking your clothes off to do it! Do what? Yeah but I love watching it. I recently saw one with Lydia Lunch.

New York girls! Don’t mess with them! They might take a knife out on you…Ditch you for another man right in the middle of sex. New York girls! They would make a dyke out of you. They did me.

Sex with that man was like going through the motion. Oh, so I’m taking my clothes off. Oh, so now I’m naked. Oh, so like I’ll fall on my back and open my legs. Oh, are you in? Oh! Oh! Oh! So like now we’re doing it. Wait; let me try it on top. I think I’ll sit here for a while. He doesn’t like it. He’s getting up. Oh, so now we’re doing it like dogs. Is that it? That was a piece of cake. I can go home now and listen to Abba.

Soon enough we went from foreplay to “no” play. He became strictly… “A friend.”

Honestly, I found myself. I was a New York-Israeli dyke. I did the bars, masqueraded as a man. I even learned how to spit. New York is perfect for spitting. But it wasn’t New York that brought me my true love. I was studying up in Sweden when I met me “a honey.” She was pale as ice. We were the perfect car crash…The dancing, the drinking, the hand-holding by the beach, the soft kisses late at night. The sex! The sex! We were true dykes.

She wanted a daughter. I left for Israel. The last I heard, she had gotten pregnant. I’m thinking that one day I will find a man, an aggressive man, who lifts weights, who can and will be able to make love to me like a woman.

Twenty Four

Art studio woman Yankee tee shirt blue denim reading Chinua Achebe’s

Things Fall Apart Sophia Loren as French Puerto Rican Italian M.I.L.F.

Anna Karinina made pussy intellectual she sits there labia for mouth

Isabella Rossellini “Blueee Velvet” murderous love tub of blue roses

Korean architect dressed in Norma Kamali reading The Economist

Chinese mask for face smiles never laughing smiles her eyes thinking

Talking about architecture modern living psychology and feing shui

Strangers worlds apart kitchen goddess Wall Street clerk receptionist

Continuation education lives interrupted college graduation expected

Southern literary girls wait after class North Carolinian Kentucky slut

Fingers pull at hair’s length discussing James Joyce Finnegan’s Wake

Choosing between woman of screen studious domestic Blue Bellucci

Groupie wanting black cock standing outside school whisper words

Monica art mamita painting White American male David Salle imitator

Courting through summer bad art Basquiat genius at lunch playing muse

Passes potential fuck hallway students lounge she breathes hard breath

End of semester infatuations dreams unfulfilled canvases packed into car

Looks at him black Rimbaud knife in her voice “You’ll never forget me” 

Twenty Three

                              
Motherless Daughter
                                          Kofi Fosu Forson

Where do I bury these lonesome boys? These romantic American jocks looking for love, the dysfunctional kind. I wasn’t like the others. They made steak with French fried potatoes, held hands while walking through Central Park and even cared to spend the night on their birthday. I am a motherless daughter. I raced through these boys like a Testarossa. A hit and run took my mother from me. I am a motherless daughter.

Pigtailed, wearing platform shoes, I walked among the punks. They came dressed in rock and roll black. They had names like Einsturzende Neubauten and Fugazi on their tee-shirts. We were misfits. We smoked Camel cigarettes. When I felt like it, I shaved my head or got a tattoo. It never bothered me. The girls I cruised with were “it.” They looked the part and played the part. They were “it.”

The borough boys fell in love with me. I never made the spaghetti or sat with them while they watched the Yankees. Behind their backs, I played the field. I found me a lonesome American jock. I hit it. Backseat, hotel room, I hit it. Home run after home run! He spoke like a drill sergeant. He raised that arm when I started to bitch. We were Brooklyn. Anybody touched me wrong, there was hell to pay.

Who didn’t go clubbing? We all went clubbing. Who woulda thought? He was a dee-jay.

Every night I went over, I wished I was the turn-table. I wanted his hands doing that thing they do, all over my back. He was a flunk from the local college. He loved slam-dancing. His hair was made up into spikes. I got all soft inside when I saw him dancing. There’d be people all around him. His boys! He turned, pumped his fist, jumped up and down, bumped and grinded. All I was thinking was, “I could have you faster than you could run home to see the Giants win the Super Bowl.”

It wasn’t long before I had him inside his dorm room. It’s all fine and good when they can’t make up their mind. When it’s all said and done, I get ‘em either way, with my legs in the air or my face against the pillow. I didn’t know whether I wanted him to be my father, brother or lover. I had him. That’s what it was. I liked him. But that’s what it was.

Back in high school, he was the king of the locker room. He gave up football for strippers. I laughed when he wanted me to laugh. We had our days drinking at the bars, thinking with our devices, his dick, my pussy.

That miserable winter, I shaved my head totally bald. The air made me strong. He dyed his hair purple. My lonesome American jock! He did all he could to beat the cold. Heard he had a few strippers. They had nothing on me. I took him places. In that tiny room, I took him places. He started beating himself up about his future. What he wanted to do. What he didn’t want to do. I got bored. So I ran. I ran to Italy. The men drank wine. They had long hair. It was so easy falling. They were vulnerable. When I wanted to hear music, they played me a guitar.

Long live the American jock! Men don’t get it. Some girls do with their minds what men do with knives. I get the urge on lonesome nights to fuck. Home is where I cry, “Mother?”

Twenty Two

Tell the boys in the basement I’m marching off with you

We are going to paint pictures of people falling down

If death found us buried under the books of tomorrow

What will Tuesday bring?

These men watch with their hearts broken and in love

Desire is a word but so is contempt

Among those who bash heads in ours is ink: bloodless

Fight them off with your boxer’s stance

Stand the little giant plain-Jane-chiC southern blonde

Their Oscar Wilde eyes are watching

Little Red Riding Hood I am here if the walls should rape

Come knock on my door Come let us walk the floor

Gathering among wheat and water this early morning                                           

How would they know if we folded onto bed

Rumors fall from these bestsellers and paperbacks

Why then should we kiss make music of this

Not when our minds draw a perfect circle

Love within these letters spill across the aisles

We collect them baskets woven with humor

Sit before me damsel wearing an autumn dress

For you with breath I carve dream mold shape

Listen as I read these words victims from my closet

They rest tip of tongue pop from lip filling the air

Return again on a night that resembles Garbo

Tortured white weather overcoming us your grace

Like Hollywood Hills during the 70’s we lounge

Lost aspiring actress svengali our Polaroid faces

Pose nude for me then looking at you star lit

Lay before my couch Klimt the palest of skin

Drink me in this cranberry gin put to sin our sex

You cried for Jim was I criminal did I let you down

On the verge damage I had made what could I say

You wanted me so bad I left you burning fresh as yolk

Twenty One

Strange Beautiful

Kofi Fosu Forson

Venus fell before my eyes in black leather pants
Her hair was blonder than blonde like the girls in the band

I watched her desperately while biting into a fruit
That aura of Venus left me with a citrus tongue

Always thought she was Scandinavian
Found out that she came from a place in Brooklyn

Venus is strange and beautiful

My German doll had left me open to see
What I could find since our love was broken

Venus was waiting one day among a pigeon parade
She had a face of cream-colored vanilla-shade

Courage cradled a comb that I served through the air
My lips formed to speak the words of an innocent child

Always had a word for the pretty ones
Swallowed my lame bar-room line made me see

Venus is strange and beautiful

My German doll had left me open to see
What I could find since our love was broken

I went to the movie show with Venus
Did not know why the sky was opening

Could it be the heavens had sent me an angel
For the days when my colors went dry

Venus is free now; she has her own little world
She comes to me from Queens now

Calm as the sea with a set of fiery curls

Twenty

Dismemberment of Night

Kofi Fosu Forson

I adore dismemberment of night
Cancer free done in by euphoria

Seldom do we grope in cession
While painting pictures of November

Aristotle ignite this passageway
Place in each square a high-heel shoe

Comb her tresses with silent knife
Keep hidden locket for broken heart

Separate rooms for separate brooms
Tall tales of electrifying men leaving

Pelosini’s garden, champagne water
Your eyes softly inspiring Buscemi

Painterly, after-hours, counting them:
Black boys turning over leaves

Blame each one our times together
How do they ever channel Somalia!

To dream fisherman in high-waters
I fondle Catherines of Montauk

Misery and faith has found me here
Dismantling subservience with pastel

Paper skin forming from dress to dress
Floating, white turmoil masquerade

Shalom, I digress, eternal muse
Your disguise hangs above melancholia

Diebenkorn woman, her many faces
With reason she poses, coquette to chique

We will not make love, she says
Break a leg before and after midnight