For Jinx
I always thought of him as someone who would leave long aching waves carving away at our small brave outcroppings of land. I always thought of eyes blinking open and shut, open and shut, with all the colors of the world spinning by before them. I always thought of that one impossibly hot, impossibly bright day in the darkest part of Brooklyn--the sun so hot and bright you could bend down and feel the rays coming through the cracks in the sidewalk. Stepping up onto the curb out of the flow of traffic like a sailor come back from sea, and we stood up straighter just seeing one another, and took each others' hands and said whatever came to mind. Black Harlem poet-skin and a crisp white shirt and all the renaissance just blooming off your tongue. Where have you been all this time? Well there's so much to see, baby. Ain't I something to see? Baby, you are something to see. When he put his hands on my shoulders linen was like velvet and the sky was like the earth and the earth was like the sky and there was light there, light coming out of windows and doors and chimneys and suitcases and soup cans. Light came out all the cracks in the world.