Amendment 1

Caroline, you have broken my heart.

But even though, cold

Woman, you have failed me, I am

Not through fighting for you. I 

May move away from your

Mountains, disillusioned and unseduced, but

I have not given up. You and

Your southern sisters will yet see

How my love is stronger than your

Fear. I have a patient people,

Caroline. A brave people, Caroline.

I have a people with enough

Pluck and moxie to amend your amendment.

I have a people who will keep.

To Merisier, A Declaration

I am elephantine
I am charging, drumless, toward nothing
No one stole anything from me


Old nemeses, you and I
I know you helped the third son
Because despite what you thought magic should look like
You were entranced from the moment you heard my drums
Because you couldn't get me out from under your skin
Call me pachysubdermal


And now as I careen 
I am a sight of arresting beauty:
Thousands of pounds moving all at once
Skin scored with deep, branching rivulets


I am unflinching, hurtling forward
And potent as memory


However strong you may be, Merisier,
When you have won the story,
I will break into a thousand tiny pieces
Spread all over the country
And the final word--the ceaseless echo of elephant footsteps--
Will not be yours, vodou man, but mine

Dépaysement

It's not as simple as roux and hurricanes. It's her brown skin and saunter, the way she electrifies straight hair. Louisiana drips down my back and wedges herself under my fingernails, under my tongue. Louisiana is damp and panting.

Beyond the flash of sequins and tease of feathers and the allure of misbehaving on Bourbon Street, Louisiana spits at local color. It's rust from her mouth into her Gulf, and how she is the deep groan of a pier settling into the murky spillway.

Louisiana does spill. She flops into the soup beans and ham I eat here. Fat and gorgeous and sweating, she rolls her eyes at the foolishness of Appalachia--where nobody knows enough to make groceries--and says a novena for your sister, the one whose husband ran off last August, the hottest damn month of the year.

Michael

I was not there for the phone call,
not that it matters, since he wouldn't have called me.
We weren't close.
But I still wish I had been there before
Michael's blood got lost.
(It wandered away from his body,
Slicking the tiles. Took a
Wrong turn at the wrist and couldn't get
Back to that left at Albuquerque.)
I don't know how to change anybody's mind,
But in between sweaty moments
I wish I had been there to try,
At the very least try, to keep
Michael from rendering
His own blood homeless, left to
Beg for change
On the bathroom tiles.

What Mardi Gras Did To My Psyche

I am not a baker.
I do not measure.

I admit,
I freely admit,
I cannot control everything.
I can only bring what I have to the pot, stir, and hope.

Once I baked a king cake.
Intoxicated with the success of baking, I drunk-dialed ten people.
It was pastry perfection.
I took pictures.
The process took more than five hours, covered my kitchen in flour and powdered sugar, and involved the agony of discovering that Kroger does not carry purple decorating sugar crystals year round.
Twenty-four hours later, the leftovers were stale.
My kitchen is still in recovery.

I am not a baker.
I do not measure.
I only bring what I have to the pot, stir, and hope.

Graduate School

Tomato plant writhes,

Grounded, with no wire cage it

Begs mercy of bugs

A Better Way Out

When the Prince proposed to Cinderella
Shivers skated up her back.
The glass was cold, her toes were cold,
And there was the prince at her feet.
He said, "Marry me."
She said, "I'm somebody different already."
He said, "You could be queen."
She said, "It was not until this night
I discovered I already am."
He said, "Marry me."
She said, "All of my life I have not had a spine.
I cried at the roots of my mother's tree, which grew
Tall and powerful. I cried and wished, and was heard.

So after midnight tonight I came back home and cut down the tree.

With the same blade I opened myself, sliced from one set

Of lips to the other. I shook out the sawdust, the cotton,
The batting, the rags, and every soft thing that ever said

Yes when I meant No. In the empty places, I set branches

From my mother's tree. Then I glued my skin back with sap,
And you can see where it has seeped through my dress."

He said, "Did it hurt?"

She said, "Yes."

He said, "How can you stand it?"

She said, "I am a woman."

He said, "Marry me?"

She said, "I'll consider it. I did enjoy the dancing.

But first, go home. Take these soft things with you. Open

Yourself, if you can, and shake out every hard thing that

Ever heard Yes when someone said No. In the empty

Places, set these leaves and berries and flower buds and tufty caterpillars.

Then you and I will both be filled with things that grow."

He said, "How will I stand it?"

She said, "I don't know. But if you try, I will go dancing

With you again."

He said he would, and so he did.

Together they melted down the glass slippers and

Blew the glass into a vase for all the green things

That sprout from their heartseams.

Three Non-Haikus To Exculpatory Rest

This morning I stayed
In bed, lolled for hours, and I
Did not feel guilty
Even though the clock
Chided me and the dog whined
At the door and the
Daylight commanded toil and
Productivity
I stayed laxly put
In the certain knowledge that
We all ebb and flow.

Home Haiku

My mother loves me.
I'm driving to New Orleans
To patch our levee.

This Memory Keeps Us Warm

When Appalachian December bit through all of my quilts,
we lay shivering and cursing at the broken space heater,
And you said,
Close your eyes and see us at Coffee Call.

At that hazy cranny in Baton Rouge,
there was nothing between us but a plate of beignets
and steam rising from piles of powdered sugar,

white and pristine as banks of snow.