dark say:
berthenia belle
never forget
the tongue hid name

Is her name nightmare, some mothball ambition slammed into hard shoes suspended from cain't nobody do me like shame having sex with terror.

The greatest Americans have not been born yet they are waiting patiently for the past to die.

But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Black history is American history.

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye