Angel, Those Wings Look Ridiculous on You

Angel, Those Wings Look Ridiculous on You

Heaven Being All Ice Now, Sing Me, Sister, Your Little Song of Fire

I.
The green bùbá of my country felt
silly in that spectral white of heaven. But it was
all Border Control would allow—the cloth
on my neck, futile against a fury
of snow that did not fall
like water off a duck’s back, but stuck
instead like leeches to my wine-
dark skin and sank
their hundred fangs of ice. I could not
speak of the inherent racism that followed
from earth, the obsidian jealousy.
On earth, birds-of-paradise have
long blue tails. What a shame
to have missed such brilliant foreshadowing.
The music of heaven is the blues.
No one here will hold
my frostbitten hands; no one here will pull me
back into the warm blanket of human viscera
I, in earthspeak, call a body—
a life. Heaven is the largest polar
desert of the afterlife, though you may think,
first, of hell. In this pleistocene epoch,
Prometheus, having burned in 27,760 degrees
of god's lightning bolt looks at humans
with no fucks or fennel fronds to give.
The light in the ice is the eye
of Abu Fanus. The mouth that opens
is of the black van of damnation named Maria.
Handcuffed, I am walking towards it.
Take a last look, sister—though this, I don't
say out loud because the big boss forbids,
above all, the evidence of the eye in his land.

II.
Pardon me, sir, but those wings
look ridiculous on you. This, I say
to the smallest angel, knowing he lacked
that righteous anger of god. Light
is what angels are made of,
but he's a white man in heaven, clad
in Armageddon's gear, so what else
to call him but that. An angel—
built too small, dodo-flightless,
he beats me down because he must. Duty-
bound, pathetic as one hand
of a glove—the blind obedience
as five fingers work their way
up its ass—he beats me down
with hands that have never felt god.
And this is where I tell him
of the kinder god that came before,
the greater lord who took the mud
that made us in his hands and reached
for no napkin after. Yes, I was born
in the old heaven—a tropical garden
west of the Nile. It was beautiful
before the bombs. No, there were no
angels in my history of joy. I earned
the destiny that led me here;
struck its stubborn cast-iron till it bent.
No, my dark skin does not mean I escaped
from hell. Or yes, yes it does.
But ask the big boss who made hell hell?

The first nature poem where white is good/night bad—but fear not, there are no ghosts in this one

The little bear jumps up and down; stands
on two hind legs; puffs itself big
and cuddly like a pink smoke
bomb; like a cute human baby saying
with all two feet of body, look,
I’m a big boy, raaahh! What a scene.
In the mirror of instinct, it must
look so scary and tough—intimidating
the small man that stood a few feet away
with his camera black as a gun. Imagine,
in the land of bears, a ramshackle
house of honey and bees, a mother
holding a lesson of survival in her mouth
like herbs—neem leaves, lemongrass—
chewed frantically to cud and waiting
to be spat into the mouth of her young—
those tiny vanities (forgive me),
evolutionary totems of our childhood
and then youth. Imagine then,
the same lesson we teach of bears
and survival, that odd lesson of
colors: If black, fight back. If brown,
lay down. If white, good night (you’re
already dead). The little bear makes
its home midair, running furiously
between the ground and sky.
And so, the hand that holds the flash
is black. And so, camera might
as well be clarinet and this
is nature’s jazz. Because, look again,
the bear is dancing; dancing
as it takes its first human steps,
and mama bear is watching;
watching from the trees, proud.