HER LIPS ARE COPPER WIRE


- Jean Toomer


whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog


and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes br>

telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate br>

(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)


then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent




I SIT IN MY ROOM


I sit in my room.

The thick adobe walls

Are transparent to mountains,

The mountains move in;

I sit among mountains.


I, who am no more,

Having lost myself to let the world in,

This world of black and bronze mesas

Canyoned by rivers from the higher hills.

I am the hills,

I am the mountains and the dark trees thereon;

I am the storm,

I am this day and all revealed,

Blue without boundary,

Bright without limit

Selfless at this entrance to the universe.


I Sit In My Room
from the James Weldon Johnson Collection: Poems by Jean Toomer.
Reprinted by permission
of the Yale Collection of American Literature,
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University
Her Lips Are Copper Wire from
Cane. Copyright © 1923 by Boni & Liveright, renewed 1951 by Jean Toomer.
Reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.