a mimic,
a tight connect between what makes a sound
and how to counterfeit it, make it feel
authentic near its place of birth.
On screen, the camera jerks
behind an ex-warlord
up chipped-up stairs
to a big slab roof.
Here, he’s questioned by
a pink and meaty hipster,
dude keen to talk to men
who say they ate their foes in war.
This one here refers
to chopping wide the backs of children,
mimes reaching in the crack
to pluck a heart,
and munching it before a fight
for blood and courage,
naked at times, or done drag,
boots with wigs and dresses,
amulets and other charms,
the more bizarre
the better hidden.
Spirits can evade
the human eye.
Maki echoes all the interviewer’s
LA nasals. I laugh hard.
But when he takes on
a Liberian accent
I do not take it well
although I’m twisted
by the sketch, a poly-vocal
back-and-forth involving riots.
It’s peacetime and we’re at
Monrovia’s first McDonald’s.
Folks are vexed.
The burgers aren’t made
from human flesh.
I gently tell him he,
well, we shouldn’t joke too much
about this awful war,
and blah blah on about this country
founded on the coast of Guinea
by ex-chattel,
guide him through the marsh
of history to the present,
leading as a father should a son.
II.
Later, as I pinch out
contact lenses, my own voice
comes blah-blah-ing
from behind the mirror mounted
to the bathroom wall.
I smile at Mr. Silly’s talents,
how he switches accents
from Liberian to mine,
hacking vowels,
pitching consonants
precisely in the mouth,
beginning now another improv,
phone calls from police headquarters
in Gbarnga, begging Kingston
for assistance, tips for getting info
out of infants who
despite receiving torture
still refuse to talk.
In my bed, on light cotton,
ceiling fan on slow,
I miscue the iPod in the dock.
Callas, not Lee Perry, comes on.
In my head I talk to Maki
and myself.
The confessors are clan
to killers on an island
I know. Same nose,
same eyes, same trail of razor
bumping on the shine-
clean cheeks. The nicknames
from the news and movies.
Rambo, bin Laden.
The loafers, designer jeans
and polo shirts worn loose.
How they discuss a slaughter
with ease, by rote,
never as something spectacular,
absurd. And I belong to them,
on two sides, for generations,
by blood.
My kinsmen aren’t poets.
They’re cops.
CIVIL SERVICE
A man-boy of nearly twenty,
slave-dressing in pantaloons
in 1930, slowly reads a Gleaner
from behind a stocky “German”
woman in a fabric shop.
Finds himself in love.
Walking home, feet adding shine-ness
to a track cut out of scrub,
he hugs the parcel of organdy
that his mother took on trust,
sounds each
