You left me begging for things most men thought they had below their belts. I was reaching higher. I could throw my legs up like satellites but I knew I was fucking fallen angels. I made them feel like demigods. I believed my mission to be a war zone duty: don't create casualties, heal them. But I was the wounded almost dead. Helping the uninjured. Men whose lusty hearts weakened in the middle of the night and brought them to tears, to their knees for their former lovers. They could look at me and tell they did not want to endure what beauty love scars give me. So touch me now -- Hannibal, Toussaint. I am a revolution without bloodshed. I change the order of things to suit my desperations. You can raise your legs, almost touch heaven. I can be an angel, falling.

 

 

	"Conditions XIV" © 1986,1996, 2002 by Essex Hemphill This piece originally appeared as "The Edge," part of a poem cycle called "Rites," first published in Callaloo. The work was later republished as part of a larger poem cycle, in Essex Hemphill's book, Conditions (Washington, D.C.: BeBop Books, 1986). Reprinted here by permission of the author, the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, and the Hemphill family. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
	Original Graphics © 2002 by Emmanuela Copal de León

 

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