I scoffed at Portugal; I spat; sucked wine.
\nA mountebank, naughty-back*, of the sea,
\nWas I: Thus, \u201cpatriots\u201d chipped off my face;
\nChopped my visage; played Carnage; carved red ink;
\nLopped my nose, tongue, ears, and right hand; so blood
\nBlanked out my looks. Exiled, got I, to rocks\u2014<\/p>\n
St. Helena, a volcano the sea
\nDon\u2019t quite extinguish. I show my slag face
\nTo goats and hogs. A naufrague,\u2217\u2217 no-vague ink
\nCan scribe how shells scraped my scalp to blood,
\nThen ditto my beard. I look like planed rocks;
\nAm too tongue-less to taste the sea-salt wine.<\/p>\n
I ape now any Moor\u2019s dark, Sphinx-like face\u2014
\nBlackly expressionless, like blanking ink.
\nA no-talking poet, I see, through blood,
\nMy pale tears smear the island\u2019s sun-seared rocks
\nWith salt, white salt that even spoils the wine:
\nAnguish could languish me deep neath the sea.<\/p>\n
Portuguese deported my face. No ink
\nCan illustrate the tidal-wave-thick blood
\nTheir blades cut loose, or how shells, sharp as rocks,
\nHacked hairs from skin. Thus, I howl into wine\u2014
\nLike Rome\u2019s Ovid, banished to the Black Sea,
\nWhere serfs of unsophisticated face<\/p>\n
Proved deaf to verse. Regret decays flesh; blood
\nPales to tears. I clamber clamorous rocks
\nAnd tend my goats, my swine, and swill my wine\u2014
\nThis mouthwash sloshing the brine of the sea\u2014
\nAnd try never to show others my face
\n(Though clever strangers case it in black ink).<\/p>\n
I cast a reticle*** in pools, by rocks,
\nCatch schools frothy broth casts bright as wine,
\nWhile dawn and dusk show milk\u2019s lustre. A sea
\nSurge? No: Tears swamp my heretical face,
\nScourged by Portuguese wanting maps to ink
\nTheir theft of Goa, to seal Theft with blood.<\/p>\n
I swallow enough wine to swamp a sea.
\nI have no more face due to damning ink
\nThat, calling for blood, cast me upon rocks.****<\/p>\n
I.<\/p>\n
His Royal Majesty\u2019s a sadist\u2014
\nhis tormenting Redcoats
\n(Red Guard horrors),
\ntear off a nursing mother\u2019s breast,<\/p>\n
her infant still sucking the lopped bit,
\ntasting salt blood and milk,
\nbefore the babe too is dashed down
\nupon cobblestone or boulders,<\/p>\n
to smash open, smouldering.
\nLately, at New York, the Redcoats
\npitched Patriots\u2019 corpses
\ninto sewers;<\/p>\n
yes, stuffed martyrs\u2019 cadavers
\ninto public sewers,
\nthe Cloaca Maxima\u2217,
\nbut not until the living pulp<\/p>\n
had been worried by dogs
\nor mangled by bayonets.
\nOther innocents got put to seethe
\nin barrels that generally boil pig.<\/p>\n
II.<\/p>\n
War is Apocalypse,
\nso George III claws our troops,
\nor sets em afire as his \u201ctapers\u201d
\nlit by cannons\u2019 bulleting flames:<\/p>\n
Our heroes\u2019 tender remains
\nare even defrauded of graves.
\nThe Anglo Monster crabs the globe\u2014
\nto pollute it with corpses.<\/p>\n
Americans! Liberty lovers!
\nDon\u2019t let the Britannic parasite
\npick us barren!
\nBetter that our pastoral army<\/p>\n
meet the terrible \u201cLion,\u201d
\nand treat that beast to Goliath-sized
\nbloodying,
\nso feeding it with wounds,<\/p>\n
it devours itself,
\nthinking its own body is meat.
\nRepublic, being once a slave,
\nI know Freedom\u2019s Violence must glare steel.<\/p>\n
III.<\/p>\n
I foresee a sea
\nof liquidated plutocrats\u2014
\nbodies torn apart by sharks\u2014
\na smoke-singed Turner.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To\u2014or Of\u2014The Duchess of Alba<\/p>\n
I.<\/p>\n
My prize for surviving the lash?
\nGoya\u2019s \u201cHelen\u201d\u2014
\nhis slattern-Saturn\u2014
\nBeauty bleached pale by soaking in milk.<\/p>\n
Night after night, she\u2019ll \u201cfuck and fuck and fuck,\u201d
\nso she swears,
\nwitnessing our genitals, chained-and-locked,
\nas our faces wrestle, then relax,
\nas kissing ends and rough stuff starts.<\/p>\n
I get to work the woman,
\nto fell her horizontal,
\nto toss her as one tosses out garbage,
\nand then take cava and lemon sorbet\u2026.<\/p>\n
The Duchess of Alba\u2014
\nor Duchess of Malfi
\n(same difference)\u2014<\/p>\n
ignores the debacle of alphabets
\nbroken by imperial cannon\u2014<\/p>\n
and acts a Realist\u2014
\nnot a louse-infected Romantic
\nor a glacial Catholic\u2014<\/p>\n
as her cunt dribbles out conspicuously my sperm\u2026.<\/p>\n
II.<\/p>\n
When I engorge her sex, she believes the act
\na kind of fluttering Adventure.<\/p>\n
But, for me, it is sensual Sorrow,
\nthat I must please a glittering viper\u2014
\nnay\u2014a spanking new sewer.<\/p>\n
Naughty is our tussling,
\nbut I am a haughty element\u2014
\na fuming shadow\u2014
\nand could prove fatal.<\/p>\n
Goya\u2019s positive canvasses, his blank praise
\nof \u201cMy Last Duchess,\u201d
\nillustrating her insufficient lips and fingers,
\nher straightforward, fainting colour,
\ndo not suggest Eve in her Eden.<\/p>\n
Rather, I see a shady lady skirting sunshine,
\ncheery amid sullen slaves.<\/p>\n
When she admits her gangrenous pregnancy,
\nI grin at my ivory-assed adventuress.
\nHer whoremaster, Goya,
\nwho fetishizes her as \u201cvestida,\u201d<\/p>\n
might soon chop up her belly
\nas blunt as a blister,<\/p>\n
when he discovers \u201cthe infestation.\u201d<\/p>\n
III.<\/p>\n
Lemme turn her frisky haunches,
\nchurn her rectum inside out,
\nenjoy her splendid ass-hole.
\n(The muddy orifice makes a darling pucker
\nto clasp my reaming charcoal.)<\/p>\n
Now her body thrashes, heaves,
\nand the bed itself thumps with our rutting.<\/p>\n
Our intricate pelts join,
\nand she emits startled giggles.
\nSoon, cold spasms stagger her tits and bum.<\/p>\n
I beam at her bull-gored sex:
\nIt looks like gleaming meat on bloody snow.
\nWitnessing \u201cJazz\u201d (1910)
\nBy W.E.B. Du Bois\u2217<\/p>\n
(Exclusive to The Crisis)<\/p>\n
The pianists sound argumentative as cannon,
\nwhile drummers bawl taps, knell cymbals;
\nbassists thread leaden webs of ebbing notes.
\nThe banjo enthusiasts treat strings
\nas if they\u2019re gears,
\ngrowling cranky into place.
\nTrumpets, trombones, cornets,
\necho squadrons of strumpets, crones, nymphets\u2026.<\/p>\n
The \u201cperformance\u201d is convulsive ceremony.
\nEach dark face is saturnine; sour go mouths.<\/p>\n
The rhythm paces illogical,
\nbut is never, on reflection,
\nincorrect.<\/p>\n
In the brothels (regrettably), in the bars,
\nwhere Buddy Bolden leads,
\nhis combo executes\u2014
\nyes, decapitates de capo\u2014
\nth\u2019 European metronome,
\nso that something African, primal,
\naudibly bloody,
\nscreaming Warfare,
\novertakes and ravages (ravishes)
\nMelody.<\/p>\n
\u201cDulcet tones\u201d
\nturn rancid, rotting to bone;
\n\u201csweetness\u201d goes seedy or seeps acid.<\/p>\n
Corruption stews in Storyville\u2019s
\nsweaty, smoky sinks.<\/p>\n
Each player\u2019s got a rum cask for a brain,
\na casket for a heart;
\neasy to hear banjo strings
\nas lynchers\u2019 whistling ropes.<\/p>\n
The jazzers deploy their instruments
\nlike cheerful bombardiers,
\nbut congress mid the crisscrossing notes
\nand beats,
\nat successful rendezvous\u2014
\nrare as cannon shot hitting each other
\nin mid-air.<\/p>\n
In those \u201cNaw Leens\u201d bordellos
\n(so I\u2019ve heard it said),
\nthe new music slaps ears
\nlike adversarial gusts,
\nsplashes boisterous murk,
\nuntil th\u2019auditor\u2019s engirdled
\nin intolerable swirls
\nof espaliered funk\u2014
\nrococo siroccos.<\/p>\n
In the bars I\u2019ve attended\u2014
\n(bleak like jail-cell bars)\u2014
\nthe black-soul musicians\u2014
\ngargoyles in the gloom,
\nlook down, leer at one,
\nfrom their cathedral-high perches of airs,
\njittering melodies that imaginably imitate
\nconcussive shames on clammy beds.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the Negro purchase on Caucasian arias:
\nTo show how they arise from the tom-tom heartbeat
\nof bump-n-grind amour.<\/p>\n
Anyway, jazzers appear aristocratic in their Triumph,
\nbidding th\u2019audience jitterbug
\nto sassy arrangements:<\/p>\n
The piano crackles fire;
\ndrums sound pompous musketry.<\/p>\n
The ragtime exponents\u2014<\/p>\n
like Scott Joplin\u2014<\/p>\n
entangle one\u2019s ears in \u201clagniappe\u201d\u2014
\n\u201ca little something extra\u201d\u2014
\nlike artillery allowed to frolic.<\/p>\n
Our sable musicians conduct flippant rodomontade,
\ntrumpet effrontery,
\nas they divvy up European scales
\nlike decks of cards.<\/p>\n
These imponderable artisans launch our ears
\non an Odyssey of Debauchery,<\/p>\n
as effective\u2014
\nor detouring\u2014
\nor destroying\u2014
\nas the songs of Circe\u2014
\nor the Sirens\u2026.<\/p>\n
The jazzers bay and hooray
\nas kosher as the Devil.<\/p>\n
I hear abortive canticles,
\nmortified epiphanies.<\/p>\n
Some critics name this attitude \u201cjive.\u201d
\nNo, I think it\u2019s the shadow of Justice,<\/p>\n
and this jittering in the music of the State
\nwarns us, as Plato observes,<\/p>\n
an earthquake is startling the foundations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
* Crook. Sestina: Castoff I scoffed at Portugal; I spat; sucked wine. A mountebank, naughty-back*, of the sea, Was I: Thus, \u201cpatriots\u201d chipped off my face; Chopped my visage; played Carnage; carved red ink; Lopped my nose, tongue, ears, and right hand; so blood Blanked out my looks. Exiled, got I, to rocks\u2014 St. Helena, a volcano the sea Don\u2019t quite extinguish.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u2217\u2217 Shipwrecked dude.
\n<\/span>*** Small net.
\n<\/span>**** See Yvette Christians\u00eb: Fern\u00e3o Lopes (d. 1545), rather than play conquistador to Goa, India, converted to Islam and rejected Portugal. Fine: The Portuguese cut off his right hand\u2014and his nose, ears, tongue, and the thumb of his left hand. Plus, seashells were used to scalp his hair and skin his beard. He became St. Helena\u2019s first exile, planting lemon groves and herding goats and pigs.
\n<\/span>\u2217 Latin: Great sewer.
\n<\/span>\u2217 W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1965), the ranking African-American intellectual of the 20th Century, was fairly conservative in his artistic tastes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"