FALL 2011/WINTER 2012

POETRY

The Congo God Teaches J. S. Bach A Dance After Ned Sublette

when i n’sala banda the congo god

of iron & storm left the barracoons

of fernando po all they left of me

was a tactile memory of the drum

stored in hands cuffed in my substance

the iron of my image

in the alimentary basement of a ship

redolent of piss & shit & puke

& the stale but hopeful bouquet

of death

what’s a god to make of that?

what demons can corrupt

my elements this way? what demons

can pull my lovers down to this?

                       . . .

they bartered gods

in the babel-mouth

cane fields of matanzas

& i got sung

as zarabanda & rhymed

with ogun of the yoruba

who too exhaled

the ferrous fire

in the dancing forests

my lovers sang to the feral tree

emptied its chest to tone the drum

left a little blood on the inside

of the skin so the drum

would house a soul

to tell my shame

to my thunder & flash

my anger on the sky

                        …

drum & song

splayed toes tap patterns

into black soil in the congo time

my drums spell out

at midnight worship in the deep

rain forest where

i ride my children

pump the arms chatter

the castanets swing

the hips snap the spine

post an image of the nazarene

in case the priests show up

they know too little of rhythm

to name the god inside it 

                     …

one day i will reign here

                     …

at the feast of corpus christi

in havana & sevilla my children

roiled the spirits of the mob

with the zarabanda

the church thought my dance a bridge

to hell: padre juan de mariana called it

“so …lascivious…in its sway

that it was enough

to set decent people afire”

covarrubias de orozco thought my dance

so evil the jews must have created it

                       …

the priests were not entirely wrong

my children built iron into the drums

to set me in each cadence & i mounted

souls in every dancing crowd

my tempi set in the marrow

rose through the arteries

flooded all reason

the priests screamed “demonic possession”

& flexed their crucifixes but i

had the drum & my drum

was seditious

                    …

the strings from the sahel north

of congo sang my beat in sevilla

in naples over france into

the germanys in the new voice

of guitar

less evangelical

than the drum

away from my children

my chants fell out

my beat could barely move

dressed in silks & perfumed

to be presented

to the court just out

of plainsong &

wanting to dance

without a notion of swing

so they smuggled my bleached out

sarabande through the servants’ entrance

where sebastian bach found it

& called it new                        .