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Child or woman. Memory or need. Today, again, I can see you

in her eyes, today her eyes again pursue the ground, look

for some sign, some path to follow away from her route.

Her sweatshirt is zipped to the throat and I am realizing that

we are both then, somehow ashamed of what has suddenly happened

between us. And I’m slowing down a little, as if to let

the spring sun catch up to these hands on the steering wheel,

to these hands that will not ever stop needing breasts to

make them hands, as if to uncover my mouth

and yell across the lawns to her.

OGUN SIZE:

So she tells Oya she pregnant with Shango’s baby. Just walked up to Oya with them hips you know and was like my name Shun, I got his baby so you ain’t shit to him. And see Oya can’t have no kids. Everybody know that. Now she scared she gone lose Shango. Which would be good if she left the nigga… But she can’t see that, nah she got to show him how much she willing to do for Shango. How far she willing to go for Shango. So she can’t give him no child, she cut off her ear.

OSHOOSI SIZE:

What!

OGUN SIZE:

Put it in a bowl and walked it to him while he was watching TV at her house. She ain’ scream or nothing… Cut off her ear and gave it to him. Say, I don’t want nobody but you. Say this mark me as yours…

A bobwhite sounds through larks

and jays, the wringing-wet shade,

as in the first world, before Adam

understood their sharp iambs,

when the refrain could’ve been

anything’s: plant or animal, or light

so pure it sang. Even now

how absolute, how wondrously

primitive the singularity rings –

shouting its name, its name,

its name… till from elsewhere

an echo swells through April-thick wings

as if addressing some question

on the presence of parallels.

I live brokenly and assemble together

Weakly – from long bone of the arm, hip

Rollicking in its socket, and the jaw,

Its brux. From the lip of a wooden

Bowl carved from the knot of a limb

Drifted, my name was given on water

And laid down like hail upon my tongue.

It’s become a bewilderment of white –

It snows. It does snow. It is snowing.

I remembered the sweet powerful taste of pop. Tommy Feathers had stopped for coffee when he was hunting wolverine. He tossed a bulged red and white can on the chopping block. “You’ll have tat one springtime,” he joked. He was sober; that meant he was laughing and friendly, not frothing about naluagmius starving his family, stealing food out of his children’s mouths. We had sat around waiting for it to thaw. We could have bought pops in Takunak but according to Abe, pop cost money, wasted aluminum, and was bad for our teeth. Nothing for something. Why not drink water? Now Iris was describing the high school friends and fun we’d always worried we missed out on, and I wondered why I hadn’t bought myself a few Cokes.

A military truck speeds through the intersection, children

                                     shrieking inside. A bicycle hurled

          through a store window. When the dust rises, a black dog

                     lies panting in the road. Its hind legs

                                                                         crushed into the shine

                                            of a white Christmas.

On the bedstand, a sprig of magnolia expands like a secret heard

                                                                   for the first time.