OTHER WORKS BY SONIA SANCHEZ
Does Your House Have Lions?
Wounded in the House of a Friend
A Sound Investment
I’ve Been a Woman
Under a Soprano Sky
Homegirls and Handgrenades
Love Poems
to Afeni and Tupac Amaru Shakur
Sections
Naked in the Streets
Shake Loose My Skin
In This Wet Season
Naked in the Streets
DANCING
i dreamt i was tangoing with
you, you held me so close
we were like the singing coming off the drums.
you made me squeeze muscles
lean back on the sound
of corpuscles sliding in blood.
i heard my thighs singing.
HAIKU
you ask me to run
naked in the streets with you
i am holding your pulse.
SONG
i cannot stay home
on this sweet morning
i must run singing laughing
through the streets of Philadelphia.
i don’t need food or sleep or drink
on this wild scented day
i am bathing in the waves of your breath.
HAIKU
let every breast dance
a wild sculpture of rain
i raise my glass.
TANKA
i don’t know the rules
anymore i don’t know if
you say this or not.
i wake up in the nite
tasting you on my breath.
HAIKU
i count the morning
stars the air so sweet i turn
riverdark with sound.
HAIKU
i come from the same
place i am going to my
body speaks in tongues.
HAIKU
i have caught fire from
your mouth now you want me to
swallow the ocean.
HAIKU [for you]
love between us is
speech and breath. loving you is
a long river running.
POEM
mornings taking a
detour from love wide
assed life spilling starch.
HAIKU
i await your touch
come magnify our smell
make of us a long journey.
HAIKU
i turn westward in
shadows hoping my river
will cross yours in passing.
SONKU
i collect
wings what are
you bird or
animal?
something that
lights on trees
breasts pawnshops
i have seen
another
path to this
rendezvous.
BLUES HAIKU
when we say good-bye
i want yo tongue inside my
mouth dancing hello.
BLUES HAIKU
you too slippery
for me. can’t hold you long or
hard. not enough nites.
TANKA
i thought about you
the pain of not having
you cruising my bones.
no morning saliva smiles this
frantic fugue about no you.
HAIKU
hunger comes on morning
sails. where twilight passes me
wide is the river.
SONKU
1.
i who have
never moved
from where i
was born could
tell you names
dates posit
memory
when you kid
napped my blood
i retired
into my sex.
2.
and i thought
mountains were
men but these
Makonde
Mountains breasts
whispering
spiraling
sound these wo
men mountains
long with curves
caress dance
in a suite
of heavy thighs
sweet mountains
smelling me.
HAIKU
come windless invader
i am a carnival of
stars a poem of blood.
HAIKU
i am moving in
air amazon woman bare
foot thunderbound bells.
HAIKU
[on passing Toni Cade Bambara’s house]
how are we here one
day gone the next how do we
run fall down to death?
HAIKU
[for Bernice]
now i move in the
blood of women who polish
pores a cappella.
HAIKU
i cry out for the
company of women de
liberate with blood.
HAIKU
what is done is done
what is not done is not done
let it go … like the wind.
BLUES HAIKU
what i need is traveling
minds talktouch kisses spittouch
you swimming upstream.
HAIKU
old man standing long
carrying your shanghai years
like an old rickshaw.
TANKA
men who watch in the
night see me coming and yell
the leper comes the
leper comes who will feed her
she without friend or lover.
HAIKU
it is i who have
awakened in nakedness
o cold the morning cock.
TANKA
this man has sucked too
many nipples been inside
too many holes grid
locked too many skins to
navigate a blackwomansail.
HAIKU
i am watersnake
crossing your long body
hear me turn in blood.
HAIKU
i am the ugly
duckling the second daughter
eyes shaking like leaves.
HAIKU
have you ever crossed
the ocean alone seen the
morning cough yellow?
HAIKU
mixed with day and sun
i crouched in the earth carry
you like a dark river.
BLUES [for Deb]
even though you came in december be my january man,
i say, even though you came in december be my january man,
but you know i’ll take you any month i can.
woke up this morning, waiting for you to call
say, i woke up this morning waiting for you to call
started shaking in my bed, thought i was taking another fall.
fortune teller, fortune teller, what you forecast for me today,
fortune teller, fortune teller, what you forecast for me today,
cuz i ain’t got no time to be messing with yo yesterday.
even though you came in december be my january man,
i say, even though you came in december be my january man,
but you know i’ll take you any month i can
but you know i’ll take you any month i can.
HAIKU
how fast is the wind
sailing? how fast did i go
to become slow?
BLUES HAIKU
let me be yo wil
derness let me be yo wind
blowing you all day.
BLUES HAIKU
am i yo philly
outpost? man when you sail in
to my house, you docked.
HAIKU
my womb is a dance
of leaves sweating swift winds
i laugh with guitars.
HAIKU [for Joanne]
sweet woman dancing
your morning sails i see
your riverbound legs.
POEM
1.
i am dreaming
i have spread my dreams out like wings.
i have selected today a dream
about flying and i take off
sailing on your blue smile.
for today it is enough.
2.
all this year
i have heard
my pores
opening.
3.
i have told
you my name
so there is
tomorrow.
4.
see me through
your own eyes
i am here.
5.
let us be one with
the earth expelling anger
spirit unbroken.
6.
we are
only
passing
through let
us touch.
7.
come again inside
me let us take another
turn at loving.
8.
i hear your smell
running across my threshold.
shall i hold your breath?
Shake Loose My Skin
SONKU [for Nneka and Quincy]
love comes with
bone and sea
eyes and rivers
hand of man
tongue of
woman love
trembles at
the edge of
my fingers.
HAIKU
c’mon man hold me
touch me before time love me
from behind your eyes.
TANKA
c’mon man ride me
beyond smiles teeth corpuscles
come into my bloodstream
abandon yourself to smell let
us be a call to prayer.
POEM #3
I gather up
each sound
you left behind
and stretch them
on our bed.
each nite
I breathe you
and become high.
HAIKU
how still the morning sea
how still this morning skin
anointing the day.
SONKU
i feel your
mouth on my
thighs immac
ulate tongue.
SONKU
i hear the
sound of love
you unstring
like purple beads
over my breasts
HAIKU
i am who i am.
nothing hidden just black silk
above two knees.
HAIKU
in a season of
beautiful clowns betrayals
unapologetic.
HAIKU [question from a young sister]
1.
what’s wrong with being
freaky on stage you a stone
freak in yo own skin.
2.
at least we up front
about this freakdom. at least
we let it all hang out.
POEM
Good morning, sex. How do you do?
Tell me how life’s been treating you.
You say what? Sex is and sex ain’t
sex wuz and sex wuzn’t
sex should be and sex has been
on Times Square billboards
on television, in the movies,
in the lyrics dripping off pouting lips.
You say sex is in the drinks we drink
the laughs we laugh
the walk we walk
the smells we smell as we open
our eyes and legs and let the funk spread.
You say sex is dark basements
lights turned out, bodies turned on.
Sex is a breakfast table full of
leftover wine and smiles.
Sex is kinky & clean shaven
sex is straight & gay
sex is do it anyway.
Comes in twos and threes.
Comes on time. Late.
Sex is love. Unlove.
Comes with danger & beauty
Comes in clean and shadowy places.
Sex is life. Death. A gig.
Sometimes you need it in the
Morning. Afternoon. Evening.
Sometimes it satisfies; sometimes it don’t
sometimes you feel it in yo’ armpits
sometimes you feel it in the mind,
but ah, ahhh, when it comes
this sex, when it appears
buck naked or clothed,
when it comes Thelonious Monk–like jazzy,
when it comes hip hopping like the nite
ain’t like no other nite; ya
know what time it is, what day
it is, what month it is, what year
it is. When it comes RIGHT, you
understand that sex is & sometimes it ain’t
But when it is….
BLUES HAIKU
i ain’t yo momma
but i am this lil mama
who knows how to burn.
BLUES HAIKU [for Joanne and Val]
yall talkin all under
my clothes bout my love bizness
friends be doin that.
BLUES HAIKU
this is not a fire
sale but i am in heat
each time i see ya.
HAIKU
i am you loving
my own shadow watching
this noontime butterfly.
BLUES HAIKU
i wuz in Kansas
dorothy and toto wuzn’t
a jacuzzi. sky. you.
HAIKU
i am looking for
you to banish all sermons
a fine hail of touch.
HAIKU [for Nneka and Quentin]
i listen to this blood
breathing roses in my veins.
i grow with laughter.
HAIKU
these waves boisterous like
Che’s mountains smell of mania
howling in my veins.
HAIKU [for Louis Massiah]
your leonine eyes
squatting in Du Boisian blood.
violets and steel.
SONKU
what is love
you asked
i took you
inside be
hind my eyes
and saw me.
BLUES HAIKU
legs wrapped around you
camera. action. tightshot.
this is not a rerun.
BLUES HAIKU
is there a fo rent
sign on my butt? you got no
territorial rights here.
BLUES HAIKU
my face is a scarred
reminder of your easy
comings and goings.
HAIKU
derelict with eyes
i settle in a quiet
carnival of waves.
HAIKU
the i in you the
you in me colliding in
one drop of semen
HAIKU
i taste your sweet salt come
your face a revelation
of bedtime fairy tales.
HAIKU [for Queen Mother Moore]
they smell like rust
these truants shouting magic
obscure men in heat.
&
nbsp; HAIKU
a tint on the tongue
an echo in the fingers
i dust off your cough.
HAIKU
my teeth can write your
name in hieroglyphics paint
your sound graffiti-like.
HAIKU
i have carved your face
on my tongue and i speak you
in my off-key voice.
SONKU
my eyes look
and i don’t
see me i
turn around
to find you.
SONKU
when i die