HERE I AM
Here I am
dispossessed moro
an incarcerated episode of gloom they say
and what is ate the bottom of this
compulsion in distress
is it really the revenue of my tin cup
that contaminates
or the constant duplication of rotating marble
this spectacle of eyes re-entering sockets
without matter
without help from anyone
I mean in the crust of this struggle of
my enlargement
god will try to intervene
& i will be aroused to shout from
the revenge of my hygienic membranes
demanding no filth
no pus
no doo nasty conception in
no immaculate form or
disguise
I FORGOT TO REMEMBER
And one night in my
tennis shoe smell
I was no longer influenced by
invisible crimes
no longer available to erotic dreams &
revelations of emaciated flesh
I was desolate to memory
not yet born to
the state of myself inside the
whiff of a smell intimate to feelings i
no longer contradict
no longer desert
no longer need to forget to remember to
recognize
heart beat
LYNCH FRAGMENT 2
Autumn in New York 72
I am bleed mouth nod
from an oath in sorrow
i command both rise and fall
through melancholy links
of refugee sweat
i succulent republic of swamp lips
push forward my head through
windshields of violence
to baptise in a typhoon of night sticks
Scream on me
I’ve gasolined my belly against suspects
and flown away tears across
the dry rust wings of a roach god
Attention all units
i call to the fumes
drawn back against steel
against invisible fuck of a cry
to remove its road block flesh of a flunky
and let that rotting become feast
on sapphire of my adobe fangs
i am zest from bad jaw quiver
of aftermath
Come Celebrate Me
NOW I DIG UP PATINAS
Now I dig up patinas
I chew on slit logs
I polish surfaces of cyclones
I mount bullet wounds to inspect mutilations
I uproot the spirit of
the chemicals that make me
violate myself
I count limited resources
I view sinkholes in
the atmosphere
I lubricate the batás
& provoke in all keys of
flesh & hallucinogenic gongs
the obscenities stuck to
my elbow of whistling bones
& with Olmec sculptors shrieking through
banana grove of my solitude at 12:45 a.m.
& with the jaguars dropping from
my throat
& with the pumice of bulldog ants rising from
my damp discharge zone of
poetic fission
& with medicinal fat of
a big-time rooster
in my nose of talkative boogers
& with torn crows flying from my
brown-bearded ovum of
sulfuric acid blood
& with the insects blowing from
my colon of atomic leaves
& with mescal tears of oppressed fleas
smeared on wings of my ovarian cysts
I detonate
I nuclear react
I frenzy faces of
fascist thought
I become
Zaire River mouth
pissing on every
corrupt officer in an old
leopard-skin Mobutu Sese Seko cap
I unmuzzle my
black stretch-limousine lips
and say
I’m a poet
to vin rouge
vin blanc
drunk fly
corpse of a roach in a cup
From FIRESPITTER: The Collected Poems of Jayne Cortez, edited by Margaret Busby (New York: Nightboat Books, 2025).
—
Jayne Cortez (1934–2012) was an African American poet, performing artist, publisher, and activist who remains widely celebrated for her political, surrealist, and dynamic innovations in language, lyricism, and visceral sound. Taking a stand against discrimination, exploitation, and ecological devastation, Cortez’s work and life probed those issues poetically and politically. As a multifaceted artist, she published a dozen volumes of poetry, including On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems (2008), The Beautiful Book (2007), Jazz Fan Looks Back (2002), Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere (1997), Coagulations: New and Selected Poems (1982), Poetic Magnetic (1991), Firespitter (1982), Mouth on Paper (1977), Scarifications (1973), and Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man’s Wares (1969), performed her own poems with music on ten recordings, and was the driving force behind several international conferences that combined her artistic and political concerns. Nightboat Books will publish Firespitter: The Collected Poems of Jayne Cortez, edited by Margaret Busby, in August 2025.