In the South we raise a Godhead
through questioning
What city, what ward, what street?
Houston: a midwife, a first kiss, a celibate sky
New Orleans: my father and mother return
Baltimore: an endless bay that carries my son
or another way to say any port
in the storm, or that flood is a lingua franca
What block, what house, what room?
What you want isn’t a darker roux
What you want isn’t for me to stir
the Atlantic like a cast iron pot, making a Gulf