Month: October 2015

My neighbor fell in with the Baptists
her soul licked clean by Jesus
three feet deep in the Callahan River

With a thorough step
she walks between the lines
of her day glow bible
leaves her driveway and stands
on the corner, averts her eyes
for the laying on of hands?
the filling of the body?
carved into her bones
and begins
prophesying in tongues
incomprehensible
rat-a-tat-tat

I pity her
that she longer no hungers why
the sun rises, falls
what the stars
whisper to the moon

I close my window blinds
But for the grace of God
there I go

I know this dancer …

She draws her world with eyeliner
puddling mahogany at the corner of her eyes
frosted lavender dusts her lids the shimmer
of a tight sweater

I’m an artist
a little Picasso, she says,
and tells me wild imaginary things
of men that can’t resist touching her skin,
that ache to slide between her flesh
and cry with the fervor of the reborn

On the stage, she dips into the crowd
their animal selves gnaw the air and draw close
breathing her marrow
She fingers them – fathers, brothers, husbands, boys
like forgotten change in her pocket
coins lost in the bottom of her purse
gummed with bits of Juicy Fruit, tobacco
tainted with perfume samples ripped from magazines

With a lazy rhythm she rides the pole
squanders her art in foreplay
one dollar at a time
I’ll get out of there, she tells me
over a sink of dishes to her elbows
I want a car that doesn’t drain water every fifty miles
to walk into K-Mart and buy whatever I want

One day, a clear day, a jasmine laced sweet day
she’ll sweep her fine arch
on the right shoulder
and find herself in a waterfall