for Harry Mphanza

We have changed a great many of our colonial place names since independence, but we have kept the name of Livingstone out of a deep respect. —Siloka Mukuni, chief of the Leya People

  At the onset of my ingenious plan, the sun barely shone
            through the mist.
      I struggled with a name to identify the rushes
            of water pouring beside me.

    These days I wake in the used light of someone’s spent life.
     I am often a stranger to myself;
       I have no place of origin, no home.

1. How I Would Paint the Future

A strip of horizon and a figure,
seen from the back, forever approaching.

After I put on lipstick
I turn my hand mirror upside down

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration

Some nights are as black
as belladonna—the black that gathers
at the back of the throat when a boy's
voice falls over your head like a hood:

I pretend a knowing of your skin or,
beneath it, the wells of yourself, over the time it took
you here.

Then we could ride all day and yet 
not reach the farthest edge of our demesne,
its slow hand clap of grouse

I affirm my devotion to your ingenious application, allowing you to track my whereabouts across all devices.

Sudden cold or the sudden sense of having been cold for a long time 
He said he was getting back some things that had been lost like what  
Love oh great looking out across the river he wouldn’t meet my eyes either