Skin
This skin is leather black with time,
this skin is tough like old rooster flesh,
this skin won’t give like poulet,
you bite this skin you likely to eat crow,
this skin has wailed its own symphony
of blue black sorrow, tough like this,
this skin tasted the salt crystals,
licked them up and recorded the pain,
this skin’s been turned inside out, left to dry,
this skin’s swallowed the blast of sun,
collected the bite of January air
and still there, still there,
this skin has smelt the acrid smoke
of burning flesh, hanging there against
a new day, sniffed it, felt its layering
of old skin, soot carrying centuries
of suffering, this skin is washed with flow
of menstrual blood, love juice, old semen,
bitter spit, loose shit, every ugliness
dumped into the earth been through this skin,
this is no tenderloin, prime cut skin,
you bite me, you likely to eat crow,
this skin is a walking museum,
when you see me coming read me
when you see me coming read me.
One day I will come to the river.
Oh, love will touch this skin,
and I will rise, ebony glow and tender
crossing that river to the other side.
Wisteria: Twilight Poems from the Swamp Country, Kwame Dawes.
Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, CA. 2006, First Edition. $18.00
Fatal error: Call to undefined function post_password_required() in /nfs/www/WWW_pages/prowler/the-book-prowler.net/wp-content/themes/PureType/comments.php on line 11