Napo 24

Dear K—

Dear knells, dear kegs,

Dear kazoos, here is another day

I am far away from home,

The small town of Kiel, Wisconsin.

I write a friend from Odessa,

Not in Ukraine, but in Texas.

She is afraid of the countryside.

I am afraid of the city centers.

And fear, yes fear, keeps us apart,

Though there is a kinship between us.

I think of all the oil well there

And how they pump the blackness

From the softness of the earth,

The klack klack klack of fracking.

Where does a city end?

When it dips into the openness

Of west Texas? When it turns

Into the rural roads, when fear

Changes from urban to emptiness—

Where the color of the skin of the people

Change, too. The sun can do that.

The blood can do that. Gerrymandering

Can do that, too. Once, walking

In a city, Baytown, another oil town

That does not begin with K,

Like my name, like my hometown,

Or Kafkaesque, which is how I felt,

When a black man asked me for directions

And my first response was to run

And my second response was shame

And my third response was self-reflection.

And maybe good things come in threes.

And maybe terrible things come in threes.

Dear killjoy of reality, kindling of love

And hate, dear my kin, the earth

Is a kaleidoscope of colors, and yes,

Sometimes, it’s disorienting,

Confusing, and kismet. Where is home

But where the people all carry

The same scent. Manure and wildflowers.

Refinery smoke and breeze off the bay.

Sulphur and desert sun.

I try to read so many books,

To become someone else,

To shed this skin and this shame

And the kleptomania in my blood,

But plots end like cities

And I’m left with the self,

The breath, the heartbeat.

Some cities end with a border

A line drawn on the map,

In the heart, in memory.

Dear kamikazes, dear kebabs,

Dear the kneeling knees of so many,

Thank God I’ve never awoken one day,

A cockroach in a house,

Suddenly hated, suddenly feared,

Suddenly a target for the heel of a shoe.

Thank God for this body with legs to run

away and towards a home and a history

and the self. Thank God for this mind

that questions and learns and unlearns.

Thank God for this heart

With the capacity to open

with the capacity to close

with the capacity to love.