laughing loudly in the aisles
of a beauty supply store
or yelling to a friend down the block

our joy our rage our love
always full volume

always seeping from our mouth like
it’s too much to swallow

growing up in white spaces
made me want to be small

I was taught to say excuse me
like I’m asking permission
but Black sisters blare ‘coming through’
just to let you know

I spent so long
being embarrassed
by the brazen beauty
of our stubborn existence

exhausted
by the burden
of hating my texture

Lord, I am begging you:
color me darker
fill my hips wider
fluff my hair bigger

Uncle Mark told me if it didn’t wear a hat,
my hair would snap off. I liked courting

some dangers, skidding down the hill to school
right after soaking my long, thick hair

in the clawfoot tub. My uncle tried to break me,
pulled it a few times. Never cold enough to break.

I didn’t fit. I closed my face. Coldblooded,
the family said. I dreamed of a school far north,

the letters of Minnesota in a clean white heap.
Mary tossing her hat. Rhoda wrapped,

her sidekick hair covered against men, I guess.
I’d have her room at the top of the house,

the safe swirls of color. Outside, the white.
When the scholarship came, I stayed home.

The evening my mother’s second marriage died, she held her daughters' hands in the ocean and exhaled the habits of a wife – infidelity has no taste buds

..........the night before, my mother stuffed faith and submissiveness into turkey and beat them twice, groomed my stepfather's cheeks after dinner stopped being dinner and became repast.

The only thing I miss about Florida is the ocean at dawn when the water blends in with the sky, and I can feel the minnows tickling my calves and my mother’s grip tightening as we sway together for the last time.

And we’re proud of ourselves
for eating soup in season. Lentils and split pea,
like our grandmothers, who always kept
their clothes from splitting in time.

When bad things happen, it’s important
to remind ourselves that we’re real, even
when we don’t want to be. The same is true
of love and pumpkin pie, which no one likes

enough to eat more than once a year. Every day,
I could be happy waking to the soft susurrus
of your breath. The flash of your eyes. Only
a dying flame is brighter. I could make you

barley vegetable soup to remind you
it’s not just that we’re dying; it’s
those winter mornings. The fire warming our feet.
The crows calling somewhere outside.

My Mother Loves

My mother loves an underdog, she loves
an old-fashioned donut, a cigarette,
a Diet Sprite, a cigarette, a Diet Sprite.
My mother loves the homeliest hometown
weekly newspaper; she'll read the whole thing
and I think she also loves the raving kooks
she knows by name on the editorial pages.
My mother loves to tell you how it is.
"The interesting thing is," and fill in
a proclamation, brassy certainty.
My mother feigns a love of questions.
My mother loves sudoku, a properly
loaded dishwasher, loves rearranging
the plates you put in all wrong. I love that
too, I think, but not as much as she.
My mother loves women's basketball
and cigarettes, and gin and lime and tonic
"in a tall glass," she shows you how tall
with her hands. She loves the Constitution.
A true believer, she’ll press
a pocket version of it into your hand.
She loves to filibuster, and though
the cigarettes are shredding her voice
and breath, my mother loves best
the last word and will have it.

Desire

Sometimes I’m sure it’s common
as air: everywhere, infusing all we do.

The intentional reach for a particular
unbound tendril of hair, for the shiny, the soft,

the way our senses long for all the world,
the tastes, the touches, all our lives long.

Or the automatic reach, reach, reach
of breathing, each breath seizing

what it wants. Other times,
I’m convinced desire is much more rare:

the wide, white expanse of porcelain
surrounding the tiny, exquisite morsel it offers,

or the massive tumbler wrapped around
the merest whisper of whiskey, a sip

slender enough to make you want more
of what's scarce, what's forbidden.

Too laden a plate, too full a cup—
no room left for the fullness

of your hunger itself, no space
for the surfeit of your wanting.