Major Jackson
Now That You Are Here, I Can Think
What you really are is svelte,
the mainland of your feelings
a young Veronica Webb, and what we share
are solutions, and not so much
the Parisian air you tired of, or the fat
sweaty bead coursing a décolletage,
an unlikely consequence of the Kyoto
Protocol, but the pleasures
of lounging below French-style windows
open wide as arms whose blowsy curtain
is a shawl that formally hangs and
informally shifts when you
drift into the room
like a Spike Lee
dolly shot.
The kids are dancing to Ariana Grande
but so what. I’m watching what you
do with your lips while you read silently
around 4:22 p.m. on a late Sunday afternoon.
I have a weakness for marble, winding
stairs, and tight two-person elevators.
But the brasseries are waiting
as well as the fútbol fans who need help
cheering, for we are Americans
and are ready to hype even the locusts on the Day
of Judgment. I don’t care about the midfielder
or the winger. You’re smiling, and that’s all
the defending I’ll ever need.
Major Jackson’s latest collection is The Absurd Man (Norton, 2020). He served as guest editor of Best American Poetry 2019.