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syntax    always there
    ghosting the margins that words
their black-lined authority
    do not cross    Even
as they rise up    to meet us
    the white page hovers beneath
silent    incendiary    waiting

V

Notes
    â€œMiracle of the Black Leg”
    The texts and images referred to in the poem are discussed in
The Phantom Limb Phenomenon: A Medical, Folkloric, and Historical Study, Texts and Translations of Tenth- to Twentieth-Century Accounts of the Miraculous Restoration of Lost Body Parts,
by Douglas B. Price, M.D., and Neil J. Twombly, S.J., Ph.D. (Georgetown University Press, 1978),
and in
One Leg in the Grave: The Miracle of the Transplantation of the
Black Leg by the Saints Cosmas and Damian,
by Kees W. Zimmerman
(The Netherlands: Elsevier/Bunge, 1998). Representations of the myth
appear in Greek narratives, in a Scottish poem, and in paintings and
altarpieces in Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Switzerland,
France, and Belgium.
    Â 
    â€œTaxonomy”
    Casta
paintings illustrated the various mixed unions of colonial Mexico
and the children of those unions whose names and taxonomies were
recorded in the
Book of Castas.
The widespread belief in the “taint” of
black blood — that it was irreversible — resulted in taxonomies rooted
in language that implied a “return backwards.” From
Casta Painting:
Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico,
by Ilona Katzew (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
    Â 
    â€œMano Prieta”
    The term
mano prieta
(dark hand) “refers to mestizos, coyotes, mulattos,
lobos, zambiagos, moriscos.” From
Descripción del Estado político de la Nueva España,
anonymous, 1735; quoted in
Casta Painting: Images of
Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico,
by Ilona Katzew (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004).
    Â 
    â€œThrall”
    Juan de Pareja (1606–1670) was the slave of the artist Diego Velázquez
until his manumission in 1650. For many years Pareja served Velázquez
as a laborer in his studio and later sat for the portrait
Juan de Pareja,
which Velázquez painted in order to practice for creating a portrait of
Pope Innocent X. Pareja was also a painter and is best known for his
work
The Calling of Saint Matthew.
From
El Museo pictórico y escala
όptica,
volume 3, by Antonio Palomino (Madrid, 1947, p. 913; this volume
was originally published in 1724).

Acknowledgments
    Many thanks to the editors of the following journals in which these poems, sometimes in different versions, first appeared:
Callaloo,
“
Kitchen Maid with Supper at Emmaus; or, The Mulata
” and “
Mano Prieta
”;
Cave Wall,
“Bird in the House”;
Charlotte: Journal of Literature and Art,
“The Americans (2. Blood)”;
Chattahoochee Review,
“How the Past Comes Back” and “
Torna Atrás
”;
Connotation Press: An Online Artifact,
“Fouled”;
Ecotone,
“On Happiness” and “Thrall”;
Five Points,
“Geography,” “On Captivity,” and “Rotation”;
Fugue,
“Illumination” (as “Afterimage”);
Georgia Review,
“Mythology”;
Green Mountains Review,
“Artifact”;
Gulf Coast,
“Taxonomy (3.
De Español y Mestiza Produce Castiza
and 4.
The Book of Castas
)”;
Hollins Critic,
“The Americans (3. Help, 1968)”;
New England Review,
“Knowledge,” “Elegy,” and “The Americans (1. Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright on Dissecting the White Negro, 1851),” and “Taxonomy (2. De Español y Negra Produce Mulato)”;
Ploughshares,
“Taxonomy (1.
De Español y de India Produce Mestiso
)”;
Poetry Northwest,
“
De Español y Negra; Mulata
” and “Calling” (as “Mexico”);
Tin House,
“Miracle of the Black Leg”; Virginia Quarterly Review,