I came to Alabama for the dreams

   of Sun Ra, who said he was born on another

impossible, uninhabitable bottom land and unreconstructed

   planet, but was a blue baby of Birmingham, Alabama, a

self, you must not say every manner of redneck

   archangel of Egypt or Saturn if you were blood in the
                                                                                thirties

and Negroes you must not say and red clay Diaspora

   music is the alter-place, slices of standards

sons and daughters of cherubim and Cherokee, townies

   freakouts, Latin dance, chants, calls for

county workers, the displaced academics and those that
                                                                                would be

   all demons, Caribbean or other ... home was telescoped

elsewhere-in the correctional facility you must not say
                                                                                slammer

   Ethiope: he can be from anywhere he chooses

or Paris. I came for the poverty, Hadn't I lost everything

   the world an orphans' home like Bishop's

in Cambridge and New York, in Providence? A fly trapped
                                                                                inside

   in Brazil, or magnified grainy landscapes

with as much body I remain and this is a dream

   of Dixie: the blackface anthem for a land

I came for the apparel of the NuSouth, which I found

   of cotton, played at the inauguration

in South Carolina a haberdashery run by two brothers

   of Jefferson Davis, in Montgomery, Alabama,

(I came for brotherhood) who sell the threads that bind us:

   the impossible attracts me, because everything possible

for the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave
                                                                                owners