Dear woman, listening with your mouth
pursed into a false ear, which cannot—
despite the clarity with which my sisters,
who are poets & so precise
as an incision, describe how they are called
out of their blood into the same work—
get over how both women tower
gracefully & both, of course, are black
so become, in your mouth, mother
& child, had to share a body
been the same person. I suppose I’m grateful
when I can leave myself for long enough
to let a stranger or a love inside me, to be held
open as a tunnel for all the midnight traffic
or only you, whose face is not my face
until it is by some dark magic & oh, boy.
Dear dear boi. Whose body I slip into,
wear as a jacket against the rain.