thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.
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won’t you celebrate with me
a kind of life? i had no model.born in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did i see to be except myself?i made it uphere on this bridge betweenstarshine and clay,my one hand holding tightmy one hand; come celebratewith me that everydaysomething has tried to kill meand has failed.
after the all been done and i
another creature’s back, i wondercould i have fought these thing?surrounded by no son of mine saveold men calling Mother like in the talethe astrologer tell, i wondercould i have walk away when voicessinging in my sleep? i one old woman.always i seem to worrying now foranother young girl asleepin the plain evening.what song around her…
it lay in my palm soft and trembled
authority and how it always insistedon itself, how it was masterof the man, how it measured him, neverwas ignored or denied, and how it promisedthere would be sweetness if it was obeyedjust like the saints do, like the angelsand i opened the window and held out myuncupped hand; i swear to godi thought it could…
i need to know their names
jauntily the way men go in groupsswinging their arms, and the onesthose sweating women whom i would have joinedafter a hard game to chew the fatwhat would we have called each other laughingjoking into our beer? where are my gangs,my teams, my mislaid sisters?all the women who could have known me,where in the world are…
a woman precedes me up the long rope.
maybe i should have had braids.maybe i should have kept the body i started,slim and possible as a boy’s bone.maybe i should have wanted less.maybe i should have ignored the bowl in meburning to be filled.maybe i should have wanted less.the woman passes the notch in the ropemarked Sixty. I rise toward it, struggling,hand over…
(at St. Mary’s)
that is entering even nowthe lip of our understandingcarry you outbeyond the face of fearmay you kissthe wind then turn from itcertain that it willlove your back may youopen your eyes to waterwater waving foreverand may you in your innocencesail through this to that