Obama's Poet

Is

funky, is

leaky, is

a soggy, bloody crotch, is

sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,

is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is

postpartum tears that soak the baby's lovely head.

Then everything dries and disappears

Then everything dries and disappears

Sometimes I think about Great-Uncle Paul who left Tuskeegee,

Alabama to become a forester in Oregon and in so doing

became fundamentally white for the rest of his life, except

when he travelled without his white wife to visit his siblings -

now in New York, now in Harlem, USA - just as pale-skinned,

as straight-haired, as blue-eyed as Paul, and black. Paul never told anyone

he was white, he just didn't say that he was black, and who could imagine,

an Oregon forester in 1930 as anything other than white?

The siblings in Harlem each morning ensured

no one confused them for anything other than what they were, black.

They were black! Brown-skinned spouses reduced confusion.

Many others have told, and not told, this tale.

When Paul came East alone he was as they were, their brother.

Underground 

Under water grottos, caverns

Filled with apes

That eat figs.

Stepping on the figs

That the apes

Eat, they crunch.

The apes howl, bare

Their fangs, dance,

Tumble in the

Rushing water,

Musty, wet pelts

Glistening in the blue.