Dawson - When rap spoke straight to God: a poem

Adjusting type size may change line breaks. Landscape mode may help to preserve line breaks. Copyright 2018 Erica Dawson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210. W. W.

Norton & Company The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Dawson, Erica, 1979- author. Title: When rap spoke straight to God / Erica Dawson. Description: First U.S. edition. | Portland, OR : Tin House Books, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2018021938| ISBN 9781947793033 (paperback) | ISBN 9781947793095 (ebook) Classification: LCC PS3604.A9786 W48 2018 | DDC 811/.6dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018021938 First US Edition 2018 Interior design by Jakob Vala www.tinhouse.com For Mom

Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations.

DEUTERONOMY 10:15 Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Too much harmony. Not enough bone. FRANK us in a minute , rap spoke straight to God. When I broke bread, it was a syrup sandwich. I licked all the body off my nails.

I saw two birds stalking a basketball court, rivaling a confirmation when they spotted buckled asphalt and saw a growing squall go smooth. And when they dove to break the surface a reconciliation. I said to God, Just watch the demonstration every night. Youll see blackness kept in its station. I saw peace, one time, in fuchsia duska fair tomorrow. And I saw dusk that plagiarized my one and only prayer Hallelujah.

Im ready to go searching for that mysterious dark when nightfall proves to be empty before the heavens turn red from the fire. When God gave Ten Commandmentsthou shalt not do any work; must keep it holy; honor father, mother; never covet wife nor ox nor ass I heard do work, daughter, wife,his ass off. Mary said, I deserve a steed for this. The sex that didnt need bodies. This swag. No hip craned nearly out its socket.

Not one flex. Seduction is when Im on my knees. My lip gets licked by Common Whitlow.You gotta get real comfortable, get both your hands dirty when thunderstorms play rough with wind. Just let it kiss you. I was only half of thirty when my body had its way with me. Much less violent than you would think.A kind of shame.

But what is change? Was I branded a new woman? Was I a woman yet? I chew myrrh now to soothe my throat. Feeding, I press my chest against his mouth and say my name. My church camp counselors said fucking go to bed [no names], but theyd just taught us one more Christian song It only takes a spark to get a fire going and we sang loud as we could. Took in a lobbing pitch of air. A held-out note. Vibrato good enough for all the coming grab-ass, good over-the-shirt action.

I left to go find that one counselor awake, the one with weed, listening to Snoop, instructing, Spark that fat-ass J. God by the way he sang the Js long a , this guy was hot damn pitch perfect. Gangsta. He swallowed all the pitch of the Patuxent night. Made dark look good. I loved him.

Yeah , I told him, boy, lets go do this . I took him in the woods. For one second the moon opened its eyea spark and closed it. Then he told me he once sang himself off a bluff. He ordered, Sang, girl, sang, instead of sing . Minus a howling pitch, the wind is only timbre.

Yo, you good? he said. Meall swagger and time to go talk up the story Id become. The one who saw the man in the moon hung like a spark refusing expiration with each spark of expectations. Yeah, he did say sang, I told the girls, when all I did was pitch myself down in the dirt until all good and dirty. No story. No go. No go.

The fire still went on. And then that one boy fell right in, a fall leaving just one hole burned in his windbreakers sleeve, the spark of his embarrassment. The crickets sang, of course. The lanterns crackled. Light and pitch. The sounds were unpredictable and good as we expected.

Echoes came to go. Then the pitch of my skin sang at a vagrant spark lighting up one spot on my thigh. A good scar. I can go a week and not touch it. But when I do, its like my fingers not fit for feeling. Like everythings too hot.

Like when you move over a boiling pot and put your hand on the eye, waiting, and it ought to burn. I bet Mary Magdalene, devout down on her knees, had a thing for her hot palms on someone elses tepid feet: the grip, grit in her nails. The murky basinalms for sun-cracked cuticles. A hangnails clip. I saw a Bible, on a pedestal to hold its weight, closing.I heard its sighs. A new martyr to canonize.Too full, I left my finger in it, felt the rise I get when guys say, Break me off a piece of that.

When fractured, I can tense, release, and relax in slow-wave sleep with a fairy tale where I knock out Sleeping Beauty, fucking cock her on the jaw. She falls into the briar. Pussy. I find her prince. I up and sock him, too. I call each one of them a liar.

I damn the spindles hundred years of sleep because I rarely sleep. I curse the birds who took their heads from out beneath their heap of wings. When lovers look, they need no words. And when a hound comes running after me, a redbone with a smile baring its teeth so white, I wake up with the majesty of princesses who lie there underneath a spell of something better still to come. My eyes are blurry, my mouth dry and dumb. I wish Id dream a Lady Jesus exists, insisting in the gardens olive trees, I, too, can come and go from this.

Ill leave you in Gethsemanes xystus, the beck and call of the cock, and falling wind that always ends on Hush. Go on. Do it. Deny me, Peter. Im a maenad shape- shifting inside a sheltered cave. And when the grave skys body-farm of gods and gutted animals serves me, youll eat me, masticate me with your tongue.

My mouth, a bit of gristle. When I asked for grace the dust hid all the stars, and not a single thing happened. But now I am the dust. The rivers choke on my fine silt. The loess is my body. All the fertile air the firmament of my thick skin.

And then the Holy Spirit finds its voice. This is me thinking of the time I came as fire in an apostles throat. This is me as the burn that a believer breathes. This is me sucking on small stacks of dimes tucked into either side of my frenulum. This is my fissured tongue as wishing well. I deserve no need for this.

I call the space between my lips my hunt for satisfaction. I seek God. He asks, as he asked Job, Can you loosen Orions belt? I say, Can you? I got everything I need in Virgo. Her vertices accommodate my knees when I hyperextend in her. I broke a tibia once because my muscles seize at night, nothing to do to ease the choke of too-excited nerves except to curve your toes and let it happen just as a star happens when its done hiding in the swerve of dissipating clouds. I like it. I like it.

At lightnings eleventh hour, I be like, Damn, Virgo. Is this your jam? Making your skirt look better than a bower, your stomachs kind of parallelogram. The sky is not a dome. There is no shelter. I be like, Teach me what its like to burn in all the vapors, how to never swelter so hot my core turns into irons churn and boil. Show me where you hide your blood.

One time I told someone I saw the Big Dipper, but didnt. Botes and cud, but didnt. Sagitta was in a twig. I know the bodies of the body well. For just as Jonah was three days, three nights in the belly of the fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Elect wont always equal worth.