Like everything delicious, I was warned against it.

Those mornings, I’d slowly descend the stairs

in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, find my parents

eating behind newspapers, coned in separate silences.

The only music was the throat-clearing rasp of toast

being scraped with too-little butter, three passes

of the blade, kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, battle hymn of the eighties.

When I pulled the butter close, my mother’s eyes

would twitch to my knife, measuring my measuring--

the goal, she’d shared from Weight Watchers,

a pat so thin the light shines through. If I disobeyed,

indulged, slathered my toast to glistening lace,

I’d earn her favorite admonition, predictable as Sunday’s

dry communion wafer: “A moment on the lips . . .”

I couldn’t stop my head from chiming, forever on the hips.

Hips? They were my other dangerous excess.

I was growing them in secret beneath my skirt,

and when I walked the dog after breakfast

and a truck whooshed past from behind, the trucker’s eyes

sizzling mine in his rear view, I knew my secret

wouldn’t stay a secret long. They were paired, up top,

by a swelling, flesh rising like cream to fill, then overfill

the frothy training bra. Everything softening on the shelf,

milk-made. Meanwhile, at breakfast, sitting on my secret,

I’d concede, scrape kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, lay down

my weapon, dry toast sticking in my craw. I’d think

of the girl from school, seventeen to my fourteen,

who crawled out the window of first-period bio

to meet her boyfriend from the Navy base. She’d collar

his peacoat, draw his mouth to her white neck,

or so I kept imagining. Slut, the girls whispered, watching

her struggling back through the window, throat

pinked from cold and his jaw’s dark stubble,

kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr. Only fourth period,

and already I was hungry for lunch, or something.

Thank you, Republican parents, thank you,

Catholic education, thank you, Reganomics—

words I never knew I’d write. But I hereby acknowledge

repression’s inadvertent gifts. Folks who came of age

in liberal families, permissive cities, the free-love sixties,

how far they must go to transgress—

Vegas, latex, sex tapes, a sugaring of the nostrils?

Yet how close at hand rebellion is for me.

Merely making married love with my married husband,

I’m a filthy whore. Merely sitting down to breakfast

and raising the butter knife, I’m living on the edge.

—2019

Praise to the obsidian sole, which kisses the glass-
coated asphalt before becoming airborne. Praise 
to the black tongue, camouflaged, yet still 
flashing a warning of give no shit. Praise to the 
magic of ones turned two-piece, left and right 
feet a pair of wingmen to all that is fair in love. 
Original uniform of the fighter, multi-mission, 
robbin’ hoodies from designer shops to redistribute 
wealth. Praise to the weave of your vamp poised 
to catch flight into ribs at night, at noon, 
whenever. Praise to the aight whatever, 
aight bet, spoken wordlessly via emblem, 
prophecy of manual dexterity, long rumored
tale of ten toes down come true. Praise to 
your run through rap charts, Nelly who sang
of your stomp and survival, to 1982
the year of your birth, your absorption of
pressure waves from apartheid bombings,
Tough, by Kurtis Blow rerouted into
the democratization of dark energy. Ode to 
your essence making up 73% of the cosmos,
the power of 310 Angola aircraft in a single heel, 
to each uptown caressing a possible president,
to a force beyond force = mass x acceleration.
Fast lil ma working behind the cash register. 
On the way home she passes home. 
Ode to what you gave her, what you give her, 
wherever she’s going.