Kyle G. Dargan   OF THE SUN .......This skin has a deeper appetite .......for light than most. .......It appears dark— on surface, .......just milking .......rays from a black body. The black body that acts .......on browns and tans. The sun's .......rhythm resonates with the equatorial spine, the .......defining line—blue black, (further up) .......brown, (further) high yellow. Hierarchy? .......Sunlight, the language .......of melanocytes. Diglossic skin, chromatic kin. Come .......together reluctant collage. Eglon Daley Anniversary March 72" x 96", acrylic on canvas see more work by Eglon Daley     TESSERAE .......January 16, 2006 Having woken with thee long pool in mind, I dressed and met January. To honor is to walk on this day—march with no chorus of feet. Holiday gas, holiday money all burn in Amreica's engine. The fire, they say, keeps us free. Red and wet: my nose by time I've hoofed to Washington's exclamation. Red, black and green: A Muslim Journal I'm tossed by the horseshoe honoring World War II. My feet fall between the bare trees' harmony though, divested, their parts all look same. I come to reflect King, but my eyes pan for brown. Correction: I come to be reflected— multiplied by this prism of marble and water, framed water imitating sky—what is cropped by the pool's borders could extend ad infinitum as we. Beyond the emulsed edges of King's image, his dream-stance on this stone, a rich static of negroes waxing black, turning Afro, painfully American beneath their skin. Turn to today where we see them as one through nostalgia's oculus. Look back, look same. Weren't we in sync then—in step, steeped in names of blood? There is no struggle coded in black marrow. There is no black marrow simply blood and steps to spill towards least resistance like water. History's icy headwind fought me for this memorial and this day's pregnant memory of merely a blood and bone man. I win something here even if none like me share witness. The stone's cold bites through my denim while beside me a father reads from chapped hands the speech locked inside the stone's gray beauty so his daughter may see herself in it—a moment united before we all leave as strangers.     BOARDING POINTS .......Bus Station, NE DC ..............[N] A baby is one less bag you may carry. ..............[E] The hustler's faded velour, a tepid, alien hide—let him take you home. ..............[S] The NY direct, ever punctual as it is never arriving from anywhere. It grows out the tarmac, wet to steaming. ..............[W] "Hey poet, you got any papers?" Shouldn't papers be laced with poems? ..............[S] Some idle stiller than the coaches. ..............[E] "I can't. At the department store today, I bought a face. I owe them this spare change." ..............[W] When the busses stop, these men will clean up into princes, igniting night like Montecristos kissed by razors. ..............[N] The brother with the shakes is suspicious of the bench. He may be on to something. ..............[S] The longest line: WILLIAMSBURG, HAMPTON, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA BEACH. Somewhere, coasts remember the first vessel. ..............[E] Industry: now the beggar has a soda and a straw. ..............[W] The new shift at the ticket booth wears a cotton phallus from her neck. Over the p.a., she tames crowds. ..............[S] Thunk—an infant Newton jostles receivers from pay phones' palms onto his skull. Even against babies there are laws.     ONE'S FOR THE MONEY two never shows. Three has to play the upright, give the rhythm section a soul. One revives a tune— two defibrillator hands pressed to the song's chest, chanting check in threes. No one can tell the melody is jerry-rigged. The two soundmen pound the stage, three minutes 'til curtains. One shadowy brother says he can play the drums. Toss him two drumsticks, he makes fire—third-degree funk, 1000 B.C. neolithic noise, something like that. The stage's eyelid rises: twin mic stands | voluptuous bass | drum set in lotus position. Triangular vibe. Any anxiousness washes away with one wave of applause. The drums roll in. The upright sings steady from its gut and the DJ, scratching, turns speakers into banshees. Three sets, sweaty, one last drum solo and the house is sold. Asked later, they'll say organichiphopjazz. One picks up the money. Two never showed. Three full pockets, fuller futures hit the road. .......For the legendary Fifth Dynasty Crew     GRACE ON THEE Soon the pretty machines will want you to touch them, to point (appoint) another man leader. Speak a fingerprint language to the touchscreen's plastic membrane: "he's...the one." Like solar sails, pretty machines need nothing tactile to run—not a finger or brain or fear- of-god. The pretty machines can cast their own decisions, but want you to press and leave grease smudges on their bloodless skin—to make you think there's a rib in there somewhere. You want to believe some Gepetto somewhere knew he had ribs, knew he was unlike the pretty machines he was crafting. Pretty machines know there's no return to their predecessors— those analog, beige box-bots with ballot tabs sloped against us, suspicious as brows, and levers that wheezed a record of every hope.     Originally from Newark, NJ, Kyle G. Dargan is a member of American University's Creative Writing faculty and the Managing Editor for Callaloo. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Denver Quarterly, The Star Ledger, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and other publications. His first collection, The Listening, won the 2003 Cave Canem Prize and he is currently completing a second manuscript entitled A Bouquet of Hungers.   Published in Volume 8, Number 1, Winter 2007.   To read more by this author: Kyle Dargan: The Wartime Issue Kyle Dargan: Museum Issue Kyle Dargan: Langston Hughes Tribute Issue credits