I’ve lost the knack to know the dream inside out.
It fizzled from wind rushing the cracks around the windows,
moon beams stabbing through a skylight over my bed.
I would let the stars have their way, but it’s my father
who shows up after 35 dreamless years, without a shirt no less.
He’s shlepping a box the size of a thesaurus of old complaints.
I’m waiting for him to tell me one of his raunchy stories
but instead I’m introducing him to Wanda Coleman.
A big woman. A black woman. An explosive powerhouse of a poet
crafting a poetry of largesse in a calendar ungenerous to skin and gender;
and he a volcano of a different sort, a smoker of rough tobaccos,
a DNA twist of rage, who once calmed down long enough to sing me a lullaby.
My anarchist brain hooks him up with Wanda, who holds nothing back,
while he hoards his past in letters to siblings he left behind,
sends them news of a country where everything costs.
Bards of anger, irony and desire, what a duet they would sing,
he feeding her dirty jokes, pulling that deep contralto laugh out of her,
she rapping big love into the heart of an arsonist.