C’est une Histoire Extraordinaire

we escape
to Paris
to liberate
the American
dictionary,
to write
ourselves out
of metaphors
cursing expatriate
authors estranged
from our native
tongue.

and you are
ambassadors
on journeys
to foreign
literature,
harboring
inscriptions
of black aesthetics
condemned for
angry cadence
yearning to speak
as freely as bebop
transcending grief
making love
by the River Seine
when the spring
of ’68
merged centuries
of revolutions
convening with
Negritude to
celebrate Josephine’s
magnificent derrière
and Ellington’s
luminous suites.

you contradict
snide dismissals
of Wright’s Bigger,
you explicate
reasoning for
violent imagery
distilled into
poetic beauty,
and theorize
that masking
is coded magic
in plays like
Sidney Bechet’s
vertical schematics
romancing your
affection into
marriage,
while you reveal
mystery within
our subversive
imaginary of
nouveau noir
protest
art.

we escape
to Paris,
and you are
our embassy;
c’est une histoire
extraordinaire.