 And so I'm going to read the first poem, one of the poems that was actually in the coffee bags of phonematic ground. The Black Madonna Sings. Sundays, neck to the radio playing gospel. She sits greasing scalps, working out kinks, eating heads into Monday. She hums, keeping time with dripping sinks, bleeding kids. She holds the sounds inside her chest, rises to Jesus, never falls, teal, heads are done, black coffee is drank, holy hour is over and odys are un. Ain't no one of us kids ever heard her sing more than a line, barely above a whisper. We see the words in her mouth jumbling up against crooked teeth, hear the clanging of music as it beats her chest, looking for openings to the outside. We want to hear, but her skin is tight, coppery smooth, impermeable. Sometimes we calcined melodies, humbles, mumbles up in her sleep, orchestrate breakouts on the backs of snores, fadden with the dream of their own freedom. The belly is full, her womb a symphony, her kids are musical, she silent in her practicality. At times she sneaks off to see a man about a dog, she says. I wonder if she sings for him. Mama's Black Body. Mama's Black Body empties at the bed post. Her holds packed with gauze, cigarette smoke, male companionship, hard work, refuse to bleed out. She counts the new ways the spaces can divide, attastasize, since his departure. She heals like women are wont to do, with needle and thread, paps blue ribbon. Her kids well fed and clothed and patched are left alone to let the wind whistle through. Next poem is a poem that's coming up. It should be published soon, so I thought I should read it today. Called No One Comes Out Unscarred. I have come here to find my father. Come to nature to find out if, as they say, we have the same growl and brow. Or if he believes in me like I do him. Why my knuckles become her suit and itch in winter? I will ask, why are your feet so big they continuously take you away? I will ask, is this the way of my future? Finally, I will classify him, myself, animal, vegetable, mineral, myth. No beyond the abstract, beyond picture, grainy film that I do exist. Following the echoing growl of my heart's breathing at altitude, I walk into brush and tree, chimeric landscapes, where I have read he can be found. Tales say no one who goes in comes out unscared. Go here. Daddy sings us goodbyes. One, he mixed rhythm and blues with his gin, stirred it until it was a party. Caught catfish on Fridays, swam through ditches on his way home. Daddy threw hot breath from Lucky Strikes, told his mama when he left home the first time, you steal my girl. Told mama when he got home the second time, baby, you steal my girl. Two, he is memory, sepia-toned, hands reaching down, out of nowhere to collect me. He is ghost-hunting, walls and dreams, an occasional family picnic. Three, Daddy wanted to be famous. Somebody thought he was old as writing as he sung with the radio that was perched on top of the refrigerator. He wanted to taste the red clay layered in the music, wanted to be reminded of home, the honey cloistered in the soil there. His dreams made him forget us for moments and hours, got him lost in his souring cup, turned his insides black and rebellious. Four, and mama, us kids waited, maybe for the real oldest to slip in behind Daddy's singing. Come and lay hands on tiny heads napped like Bible verses. Ease us into light. Keep Daddy happy when he wasn't singing or maybe when he was, well, so I want to read today. Let's kind of lighten this up a little bit. So next one is called Cryptozoology. Cryptozoology. This is the last year Bigfoot will be invited to the family reunion. His cousin it impressions scare the young ones. When he kisses mother, his whiskers leaves indelible marks that reach beyond bone, scarring her again. Next year my siblings and I will have to visit him at his family's reunion somewhere in the New Jersey Woods. He wants to know what to bring. I say tall, greasy like tall tales, greasy like chicken sipping off an old uncle's tongue and apple spiced donuts. Their sweetness making everything go down easier. He dances, armed the Kimball, circling as if a windmill. We kids catch his wind and twirl along. He sings a throaty well, gets drunk and trashed at the church hall, tilting Jesus on his cross. When night falls, he cries, a heaviness closes down around him as he rolls off alone into the darkness. Mother, the adults already will themselves into getting his existence. Drug the kids with bombs of sugar and kindness into believing that twilight holds nothing but cleaning up, sure that just the day back into reality, that Bigfoot was never there. Immaculate conception is real. How I'm doing on time here, if any time. Okay, got two more, three more. My father is the ocean. In a shell I can hear the ocean. It is my heartbeat. Maybe I am the ocean. Maybe my heart holds the ocean. The ocean is my mother. She is the top half speckled with light. It is also my father. He is the dark bottom beneath the sun's line. He swells upward sometimes, whispering, telling me his name, his story. His story is my name. It is the salt on my lips I taste when I am empty. She keeps his secrets from getting to me where I stand, waiting, keeps them to herself, holds them to her blue bosom. She has wrapped herself in them. They are barnacles encrusting her throat, layered across chests, keeping her from rising. She throws shells ashore to be found by innocent and hungry ears. In them can be heard the waves, fragments of language long lost. The stories of waves are nursery rhymes. Family tales filled with sharks, siren calls, thunderstorms threaded with laughter. In the shell I hear my heart, hear her tears, hear ocean, which is my father. My father is the ocean. He dances beneath the waves. Mythologies of the Black Madonna. One, spring. Eight kids couldn't break her womb. Cast in bronze, it could birth a nation of strong, backed Black babies. Drop them out to accommodate the next man who winked the purple plum of her perfect pussy. It's extant and extinct at the same time. Two, winter. Depression is an economic state, not a state of mind. Heartbreak, no man, no money can crack the spine of her resolve. She can jump. Sectism, racism, ageism in high heels, a pencil skirt, and not muster hair. Three, summer. She is Jesus in a moo moo, turning five slices into loaves enough to feed her masses. Four, fall. Black don't crack. And for my last poem, let's follow Jesus, the remix. No one really loves a myth. They cut them in two, recycle the top half, bulge for flowers, hide the gaping and bleeding lower portion away in closets, attics, and dreams. They'll cut her head off, you know. Use her dreaded hair to scare off haters. Turn the goddess into Mammy on Sarah. Render her chase and impotent. The magical Negress always has the answers before she dies. No one really loves a myth, so she will die alone, yet revered. I'll stretch hand grabbing for her God. Thank you.