I’m at an issue launch party for a socialist lit mag whose near entire masthead
attended one of three elite universities and one of six-ish elite private schools before that.
The turnout is massive, the prose well-made.
You could bet on naming a handful of intelligentsia-approved current novelists
to a stranger here to get some chit-chat going, close to—but not all of them—white.
This ratio is commonly called diversity. Cookie crumbs in a glazed mug of milk.
The DJ’s face is handsome;
his transitions, his choices, dull.
He lacks technique in DJing as well as exciting taste
and thus must be someone on staff’s friend.
No one dances. There are surely folks here who like to dance,
though the nature of the room prevents this sort of engagement.
The nature of the room is stiff, a starched collar choked at its uppermost button.
The nature of a room is like the weather of a room
if the weather were controllable, shapeable through its hosts’ choices.
These choices are commonly called, in the aggregate, a vibe.
Remember those snapshots of Toni Morrison dancing braless at Studio 54?
I challenge these writers, these editors, to picture them again,
or to see them for the first time, and then I want them to feel—feel—
at the same level at which they think: right here, all together, right now.
Or at least next time, should the nature of the room have shifted.
I’m at a party which calls itself a party
except a party without dancing is a party only in name.
Cover Up
But God—and I felt this even then, so long ago,
on that tremendous floor, unwillingly—is white.
And if His love was so great, and if He loved all His children,
why were we, the blacks, cast down so far?
—James Baldwin
Since Santiago de Cuba’s heat brands most skin
with slime, the sleeveless black mesh in my luggage
tempts peak air flow through the day.
I wear it and join the others.
At noon we reach the basilica, where a docent says
to cover up as a sign of respect.
A riot!
As if the Son himself hadn’t been tits out on the cross.
As if this church defines my name, and feeds
my tree, and rules the land it stands on.
As if this church had prevailed by ballot, as if the true faith
of tradition in Cuba isn’t Ìṣẹ̀ṣe
in Catholic drag: straight from Yorubaland,
a quick-change act, sleight of shackled hand.
To experience the site I choose playtime.
Choose dress-up.
Proceeding wrapped in a light scarf turned shawl,
the pews’ wood greets thigh meat as coolly
as the soft blue of the columns.
I nibble my middle finger’s nail like an ear
of corn, bit by bit till it breaks
clean, then flick it to the terrazzo floor
as a sign of respect.
Sanctions
I’m at a party where there’s a dance track on my father
used to play in his DJ studio, our basement, low
ceiling over checkered black and white tile.
Ultra Naté, “Free.” In moments like this I think of him,
how his CDs would fill our car rides with house
vocals and beats, how music was the one love
he could hold
without hurting it.
From him I learn my first sanctions: no dance class
no ‘girl toys’ .. don’t walk like that ...... stand like that
talk like that ...... sit like that .. come down stairs like that
look at men like that .... like that
like that that that. His anthem, his law,
hammered, hammered, into me.
Without his music, what would I be
but my opposite: stunted, dull,
stoic tin soldier?
Tonight, these sound bites,
these old head colds, pile in on beat
as I dance on another man—and for just a blip they sit,
and then drain and drain, like youth,
through the crowd; through the strobes;
the smoke; the sweat;
on and off skin,
string beads of hot wax down the walls.