Skip to content

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.