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.
We work in this building and we are hideous
in the fluorescent light, you know our clothes
woke up this morning and swallowed us like jewels
and ride up and down the elevators, filled with us,
turning and returning like the spray of light that goes
around dance-halls among the dancing fools.
My office smells like a theory, but here one weeps
to see the goodness of the world laid bare
and rising with the government on its lips,
the alphabet congealing in the air
around our heads. But in my belly’s flames
someone is dancing, calling me by many names
that are secret and filled with light and rise
and break, and I see my previous lives.
I think of the journey women make when they begin to emerge from the daily duties of motherhood into new ventures. And, as children mature, they begin their own journey away (thereby allowing mothers a bit of space and time to emerge)…that doesn’t mean the transition is not painful. J*
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.