My parents say
I stooped to sing
to dead crows on the curb
Nighttimes,
they drove me past
dead end signs
so I could flirt
with what lay beyond them
I piled around me
in my canopy bed
a pillow grave
so I could pretend at death.
Tonight
amid the pillows
I fold my arms across my chest
and hope to remember
whether death fancied me
and whether the crows
whispered back.
Enunciate — The
The
thing I wanted to tell you
is dat
That
That
I used to sit
in the chair across
from my father
And dat
That
That
I couldn’t pronounce
th’s da way
The
The
way he wanted.
It isn’t dat
That
That
I have nothing to say.
It’s just dat
That
That
half da
The
The time,
I don’t think
you’re willing to wait.
for a black leather biker jacket
from the secondhand store
about twenty dollars, please,
I said
instead He did me one better
and answered
a long unspoken wish
I’d eyed one
in the J. Peterman catalog
for years
a duster,
cowboy coat,
made of oilcloth
split down the back
straps for each leg
my father frowned
at my tomboyishness
when I was a teenager
and refused to buy it
but my God
found me one, black,
at the secondhand store
for twenty-five dollars
my God,
who answers back,
“Ride ‘em, cowgirl!”