Lucille

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.

the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be
beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

for the eyes of the children,
the last to melt,
the last to vaporize,
for the lingering

loaded like spoons
into the belly of Jesus
where we lay for weeks for months
in the sweat and stink

for elaine philip on her birthday
me and you be sisters.
we be the same.
me and you

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if

oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties
leaned across the front porch

a love person
from love people
out of the afrikan sun
under the sign of cancer.

a woman unlike myself is running
down the long hall of a lifeless house
with too many windows which open on
a world she has no language for,

mary is an old woman without shoes.
she doesn’t believe it.
not when her belly starts to bubble
and leave the print of a finger where