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The street deserted. Nobody,

only you and one last

dirt colored robin,

fastened to its branch

against the wind. It seems

you have arrived

late, the city unfamiliar,

the address lost.

And you made such a serious effort –

pondered the obstacles deeply,

tried to be your own critic.

Yet no one came to listen.

Maybe they came, and then left.

After you traveled so far,

just to be there.

It was a failure, that is what they will say.

BLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Yesterday today next summer tomorrow just uh moment uhgoh in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world. Uh! Oh. Dont be uhlarmed. Do not be afeared. It was painless. Uh painless passin. He falls twenty-three floors to his death. 23 floors from uh passin ship from space tuh splat on thuh pavement. He have uh head he been keeping under thuh Tee V. On his bottom pantry shelf. He have uh head that hurts. Dont fit right. Put it on tuh go tuh thuh store in it pinched him when he walks his thoughts dont got room. Why dieded he huh? Where he gonna go now that he done dieded? Where he gonna go tuh wash his hands?

            Once, when I was a very little girl in a bubble bath, I asked my father why I had a belly button. He was sitting on the toilet lid reading while I splashed. He peered at me over the top of his book.

             “So you know where your center is,” he said.

           “Why do I need to know where my center is?” I asked.

            “So you don’t lose your balance,” he said. “Your center is where all the different parts of who you are come together. It used to connect you to your mother and to the beginning of human history in Africa.” I cannot be certain this is true, but when I remember him saying this, I hear his voice catch on the word mother.

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Cunningham, you’re the cynical, faithless spawn of a crackpot gypsy and a defrocked mick—yet, you just told me Jesus would have you on your knees in three minutes.

CUNNINGHAM: So?

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: So consider this: your friend Judas? He has Jesus for three years. Think about that, Cunningham. Three years in the foxhole with the best friend ya ever had, then he shot him in the back for a pack of Kools. Think what that says about the essential character of the man. Now go home and stir that into your wee gypsy teapot! Petition’s invalid, motion denied! Next case!

Things weather fast here, soon bird will be bone,

brittle and white, dead twig snapped underfoot

where the sky alters in seconds, shine to shower,

and harsher truths hit home hour after hour –

the sundew snagging flies, settling to eat,

a fat gull’s fractured keen that cuts through stone.