Come Hell or High Water
I.
She is a woman, tall and solidly built;
you have criticized her for not being dainty.
But none of that matters now because,
along with her mother’s swaying hips and
her father’s broad nose, she has inherited
her great-great-grandmother’s hands.
Hands that picked more cotton than many a man’s,
then graduated to nursing other women’s babes
for a dime she couldn’t even depend on.
These are this woman’s hands, on hiatus
from history, needing no training to pluck
half-drowned children from rising waters and
baked beans bobbing like buoys from Piggly-Wiggly aisles.
She’s a survivor, you’ll justify,
ignoring how your mother’s mother made her earn the name.
II.
She is a woman, single, holds down two jobs;
you have criticized her for not being in the home.
But none of that matters now because
her pots and pans are floating up the stairs.
No longer confined to the hearth,
she has risen above –
beside her, as she sits on the roof,
staring in disbelief at the deep that,
yesterday, was her neighborhood,
her youngest son shivers. She wraps him
in the only cloth in sight, that striped and spangled
banner she hanged proudly four years since.
As the news choppers pass loudly by, she hopes
you realize that saving his American (albeit black) body
is the only thing can save your white soul.
III.
She is a woman, barely. A girl of 9 years;
you have criticized her for being an animal.
But none of that matters now because,
despite all the decency her mother ever wished,
she has been leashed like the children in the malls.
Her orange jump rope winds around her delicate waist
reaching all the way to her mother’s strong wrist,
matched by the garden house binding baby brother
to Mama’s breast as through the water they wade.
She mourns the loss of her best babydoll,
hoping Evelyn can swim, like Mama is telling her to,
now that the water touches the beads on her braids.
Stay close, Mama warns for the umpteenth time.
Over and over (you’ll refuse to believe her love is this fierce)
If the water wants you, it has to go through me.
IV.
She is a woman, almost. A grand stands between her and surgery;
you have criticized her courage to be herself.
But none of that matters now, because,
as she sifts through silt searching for salt-water-soaked
sunken treasures, of the personal sort, namely a photograph of
the father who disowned her and her most expensive pair of
Manolo Blahniks, she begins to remember the existence of
muscles she’d forgotten she had. Her Adam’s apple bobs
with exertion, sweat running from between her bought 38 Bs
down to her carefully hidden penis, with its numbered days.
Her house is empty. Godless, she blames Mother Nature for having
giveth and taken away. Cursing the setback, Roberta remembers
what is was to be Robert. You will snort in disdain as,
armed with nothing but the halter top on her back,
she leaves for a house permanently halfway.
No comments:
Post a Comment