Original broadside from Salt-Works Press
Mississippi 1984
*
Brambles at my legs.
Tore my skin.
The water turned red.
A weeping-willow by the water.
I turned in the waters.
I didn't want to kiss Jennifer.
Chasing through the brambles.
A cold-sore on her lip.
I didn't want to catch it.
There were other girls.
My mother grieved at my legs.
The water should have been silver.
My mother grieved at the waters turning red.'
She got no answers.
No time to pull-up my falling socks.
My fall from grace.
My mother like Isis.
Silver tears for my bath-water that turned red.
Tears for the Nile.
Oh Egypt.
Did i love Egypt ?
Too young to remember.
My mother had a silver violin.
She never played it.
I bathed in the waters of her womb.
I germinated.
A pearl i was.
The tide turned.
Others inveigled me.
The stars in their courses.
Monday.
A crescent moon.
Nearly new.
Dreamy and drowsy.
They were tender those girls.
Cheeks as soft as mushrooms.
I wouldn't kiss Jennifer on the mouth.
A cold-sore.
A crab it was.
I am as fragile as glass.
I wash in the waters' ebb and flow.
Towards evening the lilies' petals close.
My mother embroiders a nightingale.
Fish in the pond.
Brambles at my legs.
They were feline those girls.
They had not yet breasts.
Just a kiss.
The boys had it otherwise.
Telling tales.
My mother's face went red.
Isis weeping into the waters of the Nile.
A veritable fountain.
A water-fall.
The girls in the waters.
Little minnows.
I went under.
*
(Thornhill,Southampton - 1984)
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