Sea lions suck up a quick breath, dive
and waft on the outskirts of ballerinas
who gyrate in like-mind
to classics bubbling up from Sedna’s citadels.
further away from us. When she calls,
the tiger has parked the yellow-striped taxi
on the highway’s rough shoulder. It’s time,
that a girl with sunset
in her eyes, with a kind smile,
and a bright blue miniskirt softly
shading her bare thighs really
could be The Goddess. Even
the gloss on her lips sighed
Kiss me and you’ll never
Each bullet repainted you against the brick, kicked
you a little sideways, made you need air differently.
You leaked something that still goldens the boulevard.
I ain’t seen nobody, I told you.
And at A. Lincoln Elementary on Washington Street,
or Jefferson Elementary on Madison Street, or Adams
Elementary just off the Eisenhower Expressway,
we gather the ingredients, if not the desire, for pathos:
might do to a boy
with her mouth if she felt
like doing what her mouth
could do? It was
a kind of miracle: the dreamed
impossible—my soul finally called
to my flesh. I didn’t know
what I didn’t know and then I knew.
or disguised in the uniform of a policeman
who stirred up the prisoners
and fled,
cut into channels called races
dug across the ground to be worked,
removing the overburden.
they must make their own way. The best
you can do is to stay out of theirs
and take them back in if they return.