______________________
BROTHER OUTSIDER
Speaking in Tongues
“lookin’ for a tongue
lookin’ for a tongue
to get holy in.”
—Cherry Muhanji,
Tight Spaces
A snaky feeling—
When I be around Tyrone
Coiling, uncoiling.
He spooks my alley—
Tyrone spooks my play of words
I wanna get down.
Where is he going—
This root-brother whispering
Mo-jo in my ear?
Cracks in the mirror—
Oozing out words just for me
Eden exiled boyz.
The Birthmark
“I am who I am,
doing what I came
to do, acting upon
you like a drug or
a chisel…”
—Audrey Lorde,
Sister Outsider
I dream about him—
Tyrone & his dark birthmark
His bruised rose Tattoo.
It has its own Name—
This Snake of mulatto love
My black male Other.
Black brother birthmark—
Sixteen year old male beauty
Whitemen would kill him.
He’s got a secret—
Tyrone sleeps with white-chicks
They like want him bad.
The Other
“…to remind
you of your me-ness
as I discover you
in myself.”
—Audrey Lorde,
Sister Outsider
He isn’t just some—
Imaginary Other.
He be the real Thing.
Brother Outsider—
He isn’t very bashful
He knows I like him.
He knows I love him—
Maybe I love him too much.
Maybe he loves me.
I love it when he—
Begins to speak in Tongues
It gives me goosebumps.
Sula
“spreading from
the middle of the lid
toward the eyebrow”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Tyrone’s birthmark spreads—
From his foreskin up to his
Bulging bellybutton.
And then it spreads—
All over his young body
His black male beauty.
He be high yellow—
He be a mulatto man
He gots the birthmark.
It gives things away—
Just like Sula knows male gaze
Tyrone knows it too.
Snake in the Garden
“the rattlesnake
over her eye”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Jude is the husband—
Of Sula’s best friend Nel who
Calls it a “copperhead.”
Garden of Eden—
Sula is the Other who
Seduces Jude with sex.
She be the woman—
Who constitutes black male
Subjectivity.
She be Snake Woman—
She knows how male gaze slithered
Around in Eden.
Devil Dinge
“Their conviction
of Sula’s evil…”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Tyrone be that way—
The male gaze focuses on him
They’ve been deceived.
In the shower-room—
After working out in gym
All the ogling eyes.
Soon Tyrone just skips—
Taking showers beginning
In the Seventh grade.
He passes as Whiteboy—
Until they see his dinge dick
His jet-black birthmark.
Black Beauty
“Their conviction
of Sula’s evil changed
them in accountable
yet mysterious ways”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Not just the young males—
The older men see it too
At the YMCA.
Especially the fags—
Who see Tyrone as their own
Personal fortune.
Congregating like—
Vultures in the locker-room
They can smell black meat.
They fight over it—
They cherish his black maleness
Sula is sexy.
Shell-Shocked
“the mark of the
fish he loved”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
One of the gay men—
Shell-shocked from Viet Nam
Calls Tyrone “tadpole.”
Tyrone has Sula’s—
Bruised primordial birthmark
From the Beginning.
Tadpoles can live on—
Land or in the water like
Amphibious things.
They live in two worlds—
Terrestrial as well as
Underwater worlds.
Black Meat
“It was the men
who gave [Sula]
the final label who
fingerprinted her
for all time”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
One of the white jocks—
Who haunts the gym & mall
Has a dirty mouth.
The way he sayz “shit”—
So unspeakably nasty
Incredibly foul.
“Black meat,” Simba hisses—
Knowing that Tyrone’s passing
Trying to be white.
Sinister & cute—
That slinky young mean black dude.
But he be black meat too!
Dinge Words
“Sula was curious.
The word he called
out to her and the
feeling he had
excited in her then”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
So Tyrone tells me—
And it excites me too.
Tyrone be Black Meat.
He be like Susan Kohner—
In Sirk’s Lana Turner flick
Black melodrama.
Dinge soap opera—
“Imitation of Life” (1959)
Campy tear-jerker.
Troy Donohue as—
Peeved deceived Lover Boy
Who thinks she be white.
Dinge Dilemma
“No ego, no speck
around which to grow”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Snake, tattoo, tadpole—
These are dinge trademarks
The dinge birthmark knows.
The same with Faulkner—
Charles Bon the Beautiful
Joe Christmas be dead.
Passing thru both worlds—
Free-floating signifiers
A dinge dilemma.
Passing thru dinge worlds—
Sula’s synecdoche snakings
Sliding down my throat.
Dinge Sex
“high silence
of orgasm”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Prediscursive prick—
Rupturing the dinge discourse
Center of silence.
Tyrone’s orgasm—
Black loneliness so profound
Desperate domain.
Doing dinge down-low—
Down where words have no meaning
Young black male silence.
Moving away from—
Contestorial whiteboyz
To intimate dinge.
The Male Other
“If I take a chamois
and rub real hard
on the bone…”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Snake, tadpole, tattoo—
All these phallic images
That Tyrone evokes.
Deconstructing it—
Doing the down-low on
Jude’s sad “whiney tale.”
Whitemen loves Tyrone—
They spend all their time doing
Lots of worrying.
‘Bout dinge penises—
Either wanting to suck them
Like down at the “Y”
Or the opposite—
Wanting to cut their dicks off
Aint that just pure Love?
Race politics / Sex politics
“Nothing in this world
loves a black man more
than another black man”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Tyrone’s sense of—
Dinge-love powerlessness
Makes me feel so blue.
I’m not much better—
Than the fags down at the Y
Wanting his dinge dick.
I want Tyrone too—
Getting him loaded on coke
Getting him off fine.
I’m Dirty Whiteboy—
I’m more than skin-deep ugly
I’m ugly to the Bone.
Brother Outsider
“womb-like matrix”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Rewriting dinge lit—
Dishing dominant discourse
Doing the down-low.
Whitemen are talking—
About themselves all the time.
That’s all they’re good for.
Whitewomen write too—
Mostly about their Whitemen
That’s all they know ‘bout.
Blackwomen rewrite—
Dinge “delegitimation”
They’re speaking in tongues.
Dinge Outsider
“Only black women
writers were not
interested in writing
about white men and
freed literature to take
on other concerns”
—Andrea Stuart,
“Telling Our Story,”
Sparerib (1978)
But what do I know?—
I’m just a faggot Poet
Not a Lit Crit Queen.
I’m certainly not—
A Hermeneutic Homo
Interpreting Tongues.
I’m not anti-fag—
Calling Baldwin “cocksucker”
Like Ishmael Reed.
Outsider brother—
Young Tyrone be special
My dinge-love Other.
Homo Heteroglossia
“This discursive diversity or
simultaneity of discourse, I
call speaking in tongues.”
—Mae Gwendolyn Henderson,
“Speaking in Tongues,” African
American Literary Theory
Speaking in tongues just—
Seems to come outta the blue
Like a Mother Tongue.
Gay glossolalia—
Just seems to glom onto me
Like when I’m dreaming.
When I rewrite it—
Heteroglossia speaks
Thru gay poetry.
Call me Miss Babel—
I wrestle like Jacob with
Angels for new Words.
Speaking in Tongues
“lookin’ for a tongue
lookin’ for a tongue
to get holy in.”
—Cherry Muhanji,
Tight Spaces
A snaky feeling—
When I be around Tyrone
Coiling, uncoiling.
He spooks my alley—
Tyrone spooks my play of words
I wanna get down.
Where is he going—
This root-brother whispering
Mo-jo in my ear?
Cracks in the mirror—
Oozing out words just for me
Eden exiled boyz.
The Birthmark
“I am who I am,
doing what I came
to do, acting upon
you like a drug or
a chisel…”
—Audrey Lorde,
Sister Outsider
I dream about him—
Tyrone & his dark birthmark
His bruised rose Tattoo.
It has its own Name—
This Snake of mulatto love
My black male Other.
Black brother birthmark—
Sixteen year old male beauty
Whitemen would kill him.
He’s got a secret—
Tyrone sleeps with white-chicks
They like want him bad.
The Other
“…to remind
you of your me-ness
as I discover you
in myself.”
—Audrey Lorde,
Sister Outsider
He isn’t just some—
Imaginary Other.
He be the real Thing.
Brother Outsider—
He isn’t very bashful
He knows I like him.
He knows I love him—
Maybe I love him too much.
Maybe he loves me.
I love it when he—
Begins to speak in Tongues
It gives me goosebumps.
Sula
“spreading from
the middle of the lid
toward the eyebrow”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Tyrone’s birthmark spreads—
From his foreskin up to his
Bulging bellybutton.
And then it spreads—
All over his young body
His black male beauty.
He be high yellow—
He be a mulatto man
He gots the birthmark.
It gives things away—
Just like Sula knows male gaze
Tyrone knows it too.
Snake in the Garden
“the rattlesnake
over her eye”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Jude is the husband—
Of Sula’s best friend Nel who
Calls it a “copperhead.”
Garden of Eden—
Sula is the Other who
Seduces Jude with sex.
She be the woman—
Who constitutes black male
Subjectivity.
She be Snake Woman—
She knows how male gaze slithered
Around in Eden.
Devil Dinge
“Their conviction
of Sula’s evil…”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Tyrone be that way—
The male gaze focuses on him
They’ve been deceived.
In the shower-room—
After working out in gym
All the ogling eyes.
Soon Tyrone just skips—
Taking showers beginning
In the Seventh grade.
He passes as Whiteboy—
Until they see his dinge dick
His jet-black birthmark.
Black Beauty
“Their conviction
of Sula’s evil changed
them in accountable
yet mysterious ways”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Not just the young males—
The older men see it too
At the YMCA.
Especially the fags—
Who see Tyrone as their own
Personal fortune.
Congregating like—
Vultures in the locker-room
They can smell black meat.
They fight over it—
They cherish his black maleness
Sula is sexy.
Shell-Shocked
“the mark of the
fish he loved”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
One of the gay men—
Shell-shocked from Viet Nam
Calls Tyrone “tadpole.”
Tyrone has Sula’s—
Bruised primordial birthmark
From the Beginning.
Tadpoles can live on—
Land or in the water like
Amphibious things.
They live in two worlds—
Terrestrial as well as
Underwater worlds.
Black Meat
“It was the men
who gave [Sula]
the final label who
fingerprinted her
for all time”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
One of the white jocks—
Who haunts the gym & mall
Has a dirty mouth.
The way he sayz “shit”—
So unspeakably nasty
Incredibly foul.
“Black meat,” Simba hisses—
Knowing that Tyrone’s passing
Trying to be white.
Sinister & cute—
That slinky young mean black dude.
But he be black meat too!
Dinge Words
“Sula was curious.
The word he called
out to her and the
feeling he had
excited in her then”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
So Tyrone tells me—
And it excites me too.
Tyrone be Black Meat.
He be like Susan Kohner—
In Sirk’s Lana Turner flick
Black melodrama.
Dinge soap opera—
“Imitation of Life” (1959)
Campy tear-jerker.
Troy Donohue as—
Peeved deceived Lover Boy
Who thinks she be white.
Dinge Dilemma
“No ego, no speck
around which to grow”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Snake, tattoo, tadpole—
These are dinge trademarks
The dinge birthmark knows.
The same with Faulkner—
Charles Bon the Beautiful
Joe Christmas be dead.
Passing thru both worlds—
Free-floating signifiers
A dinge dilemma.
Passing thru dinge worlds—
Sula’s synecdoche snakings
Sliding down my throat.
Dinge Sex
“high silence
of orgasm”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Prediscursive prick—
Rupturing the dinge discourse
Center of silence.
Tyrone’s orgasm—
Black loneliness so profound
Desperate domain.
Doing dinge down-low—
Down where words have no meaning
Young black male silence.
Moving away from—
Contestorial whiteboyz
To intimate dinge.
The Male Other
“If I take a chamois
and rub real hard
on the bone…”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Snake, tadpole, tattoo—
All these phallic images
That Tyrone evokes.
Deconstructing it—
Doing the down-low on
Jude’s sad “whiney tale.”
Whitemen loves Tyrone—
They spend all their time doing
Lots of worrying.
‘Bout dinge penises—
Either wanting to suck them
Like down at the “Y”
Or the opposite—
Wanting to cut their dicks off
Aint that just pure Love?
Race politics / Sex politics
“Nothing in this world
loves a black man more
than another black man”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Tyrone’s sense of—
Dinge-love powerlessness
Makes me feel so blue.
I’m not much better—
Than the fags down at the Y
Wanting his dinge dick.
I want Tyrone too—
Getting him loaded on coke
Getting him off fine.
I’m Dirty Whiteboy—
I’m more than skin-deep ugly
I’m ugly to the Bone.
Brother Outsider
“womb-like matrix”
—Toni Morrison, Sula
Rewriting dinge lit—
Dishing dominant discourse
Doing the down-low.
Whitemen are talking—
About themselves all the time.
That’s all they’re good for.
Whitewomen write too—
Mostly about their Whitemen
That’s all they know ‘bout.
Blackwomen rewrite—
Dinge “delegitimation”
They’re speaking in tongues.
Dinge Outsider
“Only black women
writers were not
interested in writing
about white men and
freed literature to take
on other concerns”
—Andrea Stuart,
“Telling Our Story,”
Sparerib (1978)
But what do I know?—
I’m just a faggot Poet
Not a Lit Crit Queen.
I’m certainly not—
A Hermeneutic Homo
Interpreting Tongues.
I’m not anti-fag—
Calling Baldwin “cocksucker”
Like Ishmael Reed.
Outsider brother—
Young Tyrone be special
My dinge-love Other.
Homo Heteroglossia
“This discursive diversity or
simultaneity of discourse, I
call speaking in tongues.”
—Mae Gwendolyn Henderson,
“Speaking in Tongues,” African
American Literary Theory
Speaking in tongues just—
Seems to come outta the blue
Like a Mother Tongue.
Gay glossolalia—
Just seems to glom onto me
Like when I’m dreaming.
When I rewrite it—
Heteroglossia speaks
Thru gay poetry.
Call me Miss Babel—
I wrestle like Jacob with
Angels for new Words.
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