after Terrance Hayes

Your always-hoarse voice touts about town
its out loud frowns. Its lovely little shriek

an in head beat, muffled and humming
itself to undone sleep, slums numb peace.

Take it miles down the road with your
smokes punching holes in the smooth

of a note. Make your hazy attic crazy
with cranberry juice and vodka. Sip sip some

air, some glare of blue neon. Soak the red
electricity that be on your brass. Gulp spiced rum

and sliced rhythm of squeezed up heat, flared
out with flair. Blare now full and bare-naked.

Is it a mouth, your eye’s dilating pit?
You hear from one side a whispering

and spit out your spout a shimmering
shout-like translation. You break the elation

of lungs heaving a secret’s gasket. Sound
the subversive speak and bruised

underground. Jump from the fire
escape. Like sign, mime, and double-speak

you’re the go-between, between-going
for cries holed up in foot-taps and belly laps.

The cavern below a stomach
where history curls up,

hibernates for the long haul. Going between
the pit’s bottom and rim-bound rescuers

you punch Morse messages up the line
out the mouth of an earthy hole. From the trenches

punch out a backup call. You’ve always been trusted
shrill enough to remind fighters why they came

to the front—rush between the knife and a lover’s
scream. Stream your pitch, warm and gold

as the rich soil of hills. Cool as a cavern wall,
slick as the whirring light-gas, reflect reflect

refract the sound.