homage to my hips (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
mary is an old woman without shoes.
she doesn’t believe it.
not when her belly starts to bubble
and leave the print of a finger where
no man touches.
not when the snow in her hair melts away.
not when the stranger she used to wait for
appears dressed in lights at her
kitchen table.
she is an old woman and
doesn’t believe it.
when Something drops onto her toes one night
she calls it a fox
but she feeds it.
poets in their bassinets
dream a splendid woman holding over their baby eyes
a globe, shining with
possibility. someone,
she smiles, has to see this
and report it, and they
in their innocence
believing that all will be