Edit II

The Definition of Enlightenment

On a blind date, we are expected
to learn each other--to talk,
heavy humming, syllabic drumming--
a discourse that soon beats out
to silence. My eyes glaze.

The cold pizza we’re splitting the bill
for is cratered from my fingertips, tomato
sauce glazing the inside of my nails.
We are fading, so to break the hush
I tell you, you are enlightening.

Enlightenment. Defined as a greater
knowledge. A deeper understanding.
Your first name, for instance,
which I think I know starts
with a T. Or the Age

of Enlightenment, the return to reason,
a period sprouting penny academies
in coffee houses for those who want
drinks with their substantial conversation.
And here we settle for cheese and marinara.

I don’t want to know you. I can’t stand
the great plains, the bended folds, our kindred
elbows making solid shadows that touch
and feel each other on the white veneer
table top. Together we whitewash color,
we are matching shades of gray. We defy
whatever light pushes out against our palms
from the weak-willed pulsing of fluorescent
lights. I move my hand from the table.

We are all in light. We need it, need knowledge,
need it to enlighten, to shed the glassy rays
of fractured bridges made of water’s edge,
fashioned like the glares of compact mirrors.
In light, our eyes glaze and glow, we must make
light of ourselves. To make light means

to lighten our load, means to remove
the burden of ourselves, slough it off
like darkness. It is the darkness in ourselves
that smears a long trail behind us, cast
on stucco walls to loom, mere shadows
ignored. To rest on scratched table tops
reaching out to some off-limit area.
The less I know of you, the more in light we are.

Do not show me your darkness. I don’t want
to know you killed your mother who still lives
in some one story ranch house in Texas, can’t know
you witnessed a crime you never saw, won’t stand
to know you pick your toenails with your teeth
and spit the salty bits into a dirty ash tray,
because they say the more you know, the farther
from innocence you are--there is no going back
from knowing you. I choose the you now, the stranger
hunched over in a plastic chair, studying
the whiskers on your lower arm. I don’t want
your dimensions to change. For you to become
full, and colored. To take on shades and move
out from this long breath held around us, this paper
bubble, flimsy and ready to combust, this glow,
these bland slices of rubbery pizza, this silent date,
like some long trial leading to basic enlightenment.

Edit

Invitations

Your sister's wedding picture is here.

Reminds me of a man I never met:

Your uncle, an anthropologist
in Africa. The one that likes his men
tall, slim, and dark-skinned.

The one you told me all about,

as if he were the punch line

of some joke beginning with

your mother, one of her several brothers.

He is the man your family mentions

in brevity, at the dinner table,

eyes rolling and lips pressing to smirks.

I wonder if your uncle got a wedding
invitation. The letter you did not send him,

not wondering how he branched so far--
You remind me of small-time slave holders.

Masters who could only afford a few

knew what they had was special:

clothed them, fed them, allowed them

the warmth of their homes, the warmth

in your home. My frequent visits 

to see you, peppered with moments

with your parents, watching cake shows

in your soccer shorts, cross-stitching.

One time, your mother told me, in high school,
one of her older brothers picketed blacks

from entering the school. She knew

it was wrong but these things were so natural,

so every day and somehow she knew,

seeing me, kissing you,

that maybe she wanted that
strangeness to be blocked out too. 

It’s only natural. No matter

the time spent baking cookies together,
picking scraps for quilts, nothing

so strange to deny their blue-eyed son
from dating a little black girl.

They say, the small slaveholders
loved the individual. It was the black

masses they feared and loathed,
like something strange. Some oddity,

some stirring conversation piece

like uncles out in Africa pursuing

black men in the Serengeti.
I imagine us, your uncle and I, sitting,
hovered up in the back corner of some

hardened pew, watching, chins up,

blurry-eyed and accepting,  being there

for your sister without ever needing

your permission or your invitation.