You do not always know what I am feeling,

As I walk this earth without death,

Without an apron

My fear is that I’ll have to ride backward—

Into memory.

 

I hate memory.

Then I was back in it.

Does the truth matter

When it’s floating face up,

Or face down?

 

The young woman whose poem it was,

Crashing home from the Labour Club, mad drunk,

As scars would attach and ride the skin,

Too public, more vulgar than she wished.

Why does everyone want to torture her?

 

I am her daughter.

This is certain.

Like two angels who are tortured,

That intense affection

For silence and for bathing,

 

And drink gin slings all day, like real writers do.

I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene

with a black fist afro pick —

Music of hair,

Perfume of isolation,

 

The holy city.

Beautiful,

who would believe?

 

 

 

Lines Taken From:

 

Danez Smith “Dinosaurs in the Hood,” Frank O Hara “For Grace, After A Party,” Charles Baudelaire “Le Vin Des Amants,” William Aggeler “The Wine of Lovers,” Tina Chang, “Love,” Elizabeth Bishop “In the Waiting Room,” D.A. Powell “Passing Through,” Stephen Dunn “Decorum,” Lucille Clifton “sorrows,” Galway Kinnell “Wait,” Paul Farley “Adults,” and Marcos Konder Reis, “Map.”