Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

my father holds
his favorite drink

Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray