Sightseeing in East Texas 390
Psalm 392
Back in the Day 396
Whale Song 398
Songs without Shadows 399
The Marks Are Waiting 402
Dirge for Amadou Diallo 405
An Afternoon with Dr. Blumenbach 408
V. DANGEROUS DOUBTS 410
Dangerous Doubts 411
Lustre 412
Cameo in Sudden Light 413
Country Song 416
Multicultural 417
Low Rider 418
An Even-Tempered Girl Holds Her Breath 419
She Lived to Be 100 420
A Kind of Accounting 421
Cute Girl with a Toy Monkey 422
Flash Point 424
God Sends Love Disguised as Ordinary People 425
Magnetic Charms 427
Equinox 429
Back-Ordered Tears 434
The Black Canaries Weep over Gomorrha 437
South Afrika 439
A Tale of Two Cities 440
Grass 441
West 444
Political Science 445
Enuresis 446
Gilbert and Sullivan 448
Another Abstract Etc 449
The Conscience of Cole Porter 450
The Pornography 451
Linear Variation 452
Nichomachean Ethics 453
Chorus from an Unwritten Greek Play 454
The Color Section 455
The Judgment of Paris 457
The Fall of Paris 458
Robert Williams, Exiled in Cuba 459
Sonnet 460
Life on the Farm 461
Project Blues 462
Secrets of the Samba 467
Modern Plumbing Illustrated 469
The Subway Witnesses 470
Two One-Act Plays 471
Selena 472
From the Working Days 473
The Midnight Sun 475
Good Housekeeping 476
Five Empty Reams 477
Millenarian Joys 478
Walking Vicksburg Blues 479
A Mingus Memory 480
Hollandaise Salsa 481
Diplomacy 483
Go to Bed Anyway 484
Nowhere Near Albuquerque 485
An Education 486
Downtown Boom 487
Ailerons & Elevators 488
An Arc Still Open 492
Statement for Jambalaya: Four Poets (Reed, Cannon and Johnson, 1975) 495
Statement for the anthology None of the Above (Crossing Press, 1976) 496
Introduction to Chances Are Few (second edition: Blue Wind Press, 2003) 498
About the Author and Editors 515
PREFACE
Laura Vrana
In his indispensable study Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2000), Lorenzo Thomas astutely observed: “The creative activity of African American writers, of course, also paralleled, influenced, and responded to social and artistic developments in the national ‘mainstream’ culture. This fact [is] largely ignored in ‘standard’ American literary history.” The accuracy of this sentiment is reinforced by the tragic—if predictable—neglect
