You’d preferred to think of it as something
you would understand, but as it started
the noises seemed to arrive from
another origin. A radio frequency
humming just beneath comprehension
reached you barefoot and barebottomed,
crouched in the shower over the break
between the signified and what we can describe.
A primal timbre timed with
precision that betrayed
a foreman’s schedule,
sunk and then redoubled,
making impact with a gospel punch
a million years from its provenance.
Gained momentum in every crowded
body it occupied in transiting
to converge in the understanding
that you had arrived as neither
god nor goddess – only the conduit.
But there, hand gripping faucet,
It spoke in a language held only in the body
yes, yes
So feral and alive that you faltered to reply
after a line by Tracy K. Smith
