2979-2762 The Hythe Review 2979-2762 Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/thr.29434 Poetry Song of the Andoumboulou: 325 Mackey Nathaniel nathaniel.mackey@duke.edu 1 Creative Writing 25 06 2026 2026 1 1 1 7 Copyright: © 2026 The Author(s) 2026 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

A recent installment of Nathaniel Mackey’s serial poem.

     So now a new nomination could be heard and came forth, stepped forth as from a lineup,    suspect annuitant acquittal would accrue                                                                                  to       whose name. Maireq we said and knew    at once how and who he was, our deeper      trek into quicktrigger Nub with no one’s if                                                                                                              not    his blessing, the new congregant who joined       us now… All he’d say of himself was, “One of the many falsely accused,” no whence, no                                                                                                        whith-      er, but that we were now, boatless, all in one boat. We were of no book, he went on, if not The    Book of Between, heads over its musty pages                                                                                                           we’d       swoon. All our lives it’d been he we await-    ed, the soon to be dead city on whose outskirts      we camped lay dreaming, its bed made by forest and fauna long since not there… New congregant                                                                                                              ran      one with raw recruit in Maireq’s case, messi-        anic subtone there though it was, proffer deliver- ance though sometimes he would. On a scratch-   pad he wrote himself in, conspicuous conscript, a                                                                                                           draft        more himself than himself, not knowing better,     the office of it all an abrupt revelation. Maireq      himself made it so, nominee Maireq yet to reveal                                                                                                            Mai-     req the Revelator, a circular noodling in prophe-      cy’s place prophecy, prophecy’s fulfillment come, the coming of Maireq… A desert feeling stayed with                                                                                                               us.        We were in the sands of said-to-be. So it was or would be, a circumscriptural noodling, an empti-     ness we grew angry with, try as we would not to,                                                                                                               try        all we could to get right, Maireq’s host and cohort                                                                                                           were   we to suc- ceed

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     My sense of being where I should be grew many-        sided the more I thought. I shared Anuncio’s reconnaissance, Itamar and Shobha’s new infatua-   tion, with Maireq. He was in on that too it turned                                                                                             out.        “Cicada Man knows not what awaits him,” he   said, droll, dry as a sirocco… He was a draft more him-     self than himself I noticed again, name name’s own                                                                                                             and   only sake, Maireq’s rollout. Body bid be let go, mo-     mentness lay rampant on all tongues, moment or momentariness, lyric expense… All but a few as but                                                                                                         bones     already, we sifted sand parsing Itamar and Sho- bha’s embrace, empty albeit we thought it to be.   Subjunctivity had hold of us as always, Maireq’s                                                                                             pro-     mised release no re- lease                       •             (chant)   Nub’s low-lying stretches lay at risk, happen-      stance no one would have. Multiply put-upon, we called it Maireq’s work, the all-in-one of it                                                                                                   be-      yond us but for the moment or for each mo- ment, the one-by-one, the one-at-a-time he told   of. We stood where we were. Light rain was                                                                                                com-       ing down in Low Forest, a light mist. Mist   as in missed, mist as in mystery, the abandoned     boy was again on point or one was on point                                                                                                      to   regard him again, borne-away kin so thirsty     their dryness got one’s tongue… Willie Bobo extolling neckbones was on the box, the word                                                                                                 neck     no longer the same after George Floyd. “Gun- drunk Nub knee-happy too?” Maireq mused, fa-   therless or his his mother’s brother, bunions and                                                                                                          corns       on his feet. It was Legba’s limping walk again   with grimaces, the all or the aught of it it all added     up to, polis poised against an open field, walled- off Elysium. “22½,” rang out in Minneapolis, the                                                                                                          judg-     e’s unthrown book… Was it he was of the realm of the tiptoe ghosts was a question we asked, bal-   loon-suited, philosophically looking on. The Book                                                                                                               of       the Paper Throne we were calling it, Maireq   the first to so name it, a further tome in the multi-     volume Book of So. Many were the heads fell                                                                                                          in-   to it nodding off, Nub nod’s caliphate. “Sleep-       ers,” Maireq turned away and said, “be sleep-     in’.” It was curt, conclusive and only a start,                                                                                                         the   lost ground ythm rode us back to, ground gone     under, himself the underness tiptoeness ignored… One felt a little lifted by the hot air in one’s balloon                                                                                                        suit,       look on as though apart from it though we did.   What-to-say-what-to-say had its way as well, gone     like a Floridian high-rise, beauty and body, we                                                                                                        saw   again, on loan. So it was Maireq’s time now the       naming ceremony said, profane what had been sa-     cred, sacred what’d been profane, the accountancy                                                                                                             of       syllables quick but ascertainable, nominal fortuity   ascertained. Sound assailants we were and would be,     some vicarage it maybe was, an absorptive lighthouse, a rung bell twisting its tongue. Cloud quench. Crinoline                                                                                                                 stiff-     ness… Crinoline cradle. Crinoline crib. Hoopskirted       Shobha imagining Itamar’s rocksteady undulance,   Itamar imagining Shobha’s churchical girth. She his lady,                                                                                                                    he      her lord, muskiness of loin what of her he loved he   told her teasing her, calling her genital waft unladylike,     lady and lord though they were. Such the way he saw                                                                                                                      it   at least, Maireq said, such the way at least it was told     to him. Once again it was “The Inch Worm” we were were it a tune we were, The Sonic Assailants were it a                                                                                                               band       we were in… Whichever, we were taking dictation,   Maireq’s amanuenses, a mystico-graphitic scintilla from                                                                                                                        be- fore

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    Call me Maireq an announcement could we have       posted it pasted to the wind, Call me Maireq posted on the wind. Maireq had come in cautioning, “When                                                                                                             among       the blind, be vigilant.” No adding up to anything   was a further dictum. One by one by one by one, multi-     ple me’s on the tol’you, not our utopic we… Was he                                                                                                            its          avatar or its diagnostician was Itamar’s question     when I told him later, Cicada Man Socratic and a       whir by turns. It was all one to him, as had been   said pre-Socratic, which… So light lift was the order                                                                                                             of     it now, the day’s threads a banner, threadbare though it was. “Just another pootbutt human,” I heard Maireq say,   sitting barefoot slightly in back and to my left tweezing                                                                                                                    the     hairs between his   toes Biography

Born in Miami, Florida, in 1947, a Californian most of his life, and a resident of Durham, North Carolina, since 2010, Nathaniel Mackey is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and editor described by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation as “one of the most respected experimental writers in the [U.S.] today.” In addition to the five novels comprising From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, he has published numerous books of poetry, most recently a three-volume boxed set, Double Trio (New Directions, 2021), and two books of criticism, most recently Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (University of Iowa Press, 2018). He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone, co-editor, with Art Lange, of the anthology Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993), and co-editor, with Michael Bough, Kent Johnson and others, of the anthology Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Dispatches Editions/Spuyten Duyvil, 2017). He is currently the Reynolds Price Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University, having previously taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the University of Southern California, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His accolades include the National Book Award for poetry from the National Book Foundation, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and the Nicolás Cristobál Guillén Batista Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

 Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.