my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

I am still waiting for the lion

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

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

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

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

my father holds
his favorite drink

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

I myself should never have been born

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