How to Write a Yusefian Ode

You are pursuing a feeling like the dust

In the voice of Bob Kaufman plus the mud

Of the most fertile place you knew as a child.

If you are unfamiliar with poet Bob Kaufman

You may use dust from the grave of a grandfather’s

Grandfather plus your damp nostalgic dirt

To approximate the feel of the Yusefian ode.

You are pardoned the natural & unnatural

Abrasions acquired in living the life of a Black boy

Born near enough to Mississippi to spell it quickly

By age 5. Plus, the abrasions acquired in living

When Emmett Till was alive & living after.

It is impossible to speak of the ode

As it relates to the abrasions left by war.

Half a cup of backwoods Bogalusa moonshine,

A thimble of communion wine, two tablespoons

Of runny honey & a cup of river water

That has been struck by lightning shaken

With chunky ice in a metal martini tumbler

Should result in a flickering neon vernacular

Flowering in the mouth of the aspiring ode writer.

Write nothing down for a week after returning

From a three-day tour retracing Komunyakaa’s

Path around Bogalusa in the 1950s, over a decade

Before he saw what an ode writer sees in war.

Store notes on the notes of jasmine saturating

The air of Bogalusa behind the nose bridge

Between your eyes & just below your third eye.

If you are unable to locate or kill a gazelle, kill time,

Kill two birds with one stone, kill with kindness.

Eavesdrop on other people’s prayer like dogwood

Scratching at a church window. If you are afraid

Of who will target who in this new world,

The ode says how to prepare. The wine of heaven

Is the color of brass & honey turning air to music.

The Yusefian ode asks you to sound like you’re talking

Deeply to your spirit, something beyond the body,

But made in the wild & wrestled with faith in hand.

Address your childhood pet, address your alter ego,

Address your ghost, address your maggot, address your lust.

Watch your creature in its setting preyed on or praying

With a version of God casting the odor of death.

Recall yourself as a child in new weather,

Fangs & stingers at your borders, grasping

Your first toy as sunlight throws your shadow

On the grass. A seedbed of secrets troubles the soil.

Wind & rumor swirl in the drum of each ear.

The compass of vision turns on a swivel of questions.

Break the lines sealed with the paste of history.

Use the switchblade taken from your grandmother’s

Ashtray just after she was buried to jimmy her locked

Desk drawer. Your ode should echo the language

Inside her bills, private & professional letters,

Scratched notes & poems. If you lack such a resource,

The ode may praise the idea of your grandmother

With a switchblade & handwritten poems down her bra.

Your first night in Bogalusa you must sleep with a pair

Of leeches pressed gently against your eyelids to receive

Yusefian visions. I saw a fishhook piercing a pomegranate

Stuffed in the mouth of a boar. You have to let the ode

Climb from the well in the wasteland.

The water in the ode promises another season

Of pomegranate but must never be used to savor the boar.

The Yusefian elegy lives in the cool & vulnerable

Falling shadow of the ode. Say something that hangs

Over the burial ground just between the boughs & bowing.

A way of keeping the faith, is what the ode is after,

At least at the beginning of the poem’s foray.

A way of finding the truth seems to be an offshoot,

A root with no ending at the end of the day.