Tour Daufuskie

By Terrance Hayes

In that small coastal town
in the last century
during one of its tropical storms

people tied to the necks
of pine trees drowned

when the wires and whips
and webs and ropes of
rain covered their bodies

so that when our small golf cart crept
along the dirt back roads

and we paused to
photo the AME church
and one room schoolhouse
and small shacks of
the black folk of Daufuskie

no voices trailed us
or floated out to greet us.

Sometimes now
the trunk of a tree
resembles the waist
or a black body;

sometimes your naked waist
still and rooted before me,
smells thick and sweet
as the freshly cut meat of a pine.

Woman, Woman, Woman, when I knock
against you, it is like swimming
from the world

out to the small island of Daufuskie
in the witching hour of a storm,
like drowning in the arms of a tree.