When I was born,
Mother named me “Novina,”
and I was to be both
the prayer and the answer.
I was to be both god and servant.

When the pebbles started flying,
no one told me to hide,
to cover myself or to wrap
my own arms around my chest,
with my head tucked in so that I resembled
a balled up sacred vessel.

I stood, in the backyard,
with the simple man from next door
who still lived with his mother,
who was still the prayer, but could
never be an answer.
He towered over me,
smiling Mona-Lisa-stupid
in the face of civil war.

When the Jackel-monkey rode in,
on his lowrider chariot, he laughed
and made the simple man dance,
and dance,
and then sleep.
Eyes open,
crying Mother Mary tears as
he fell redwood-heavy before me.

and I whispered “Madre de hijos,”
but that's not a prayer, jackel-monkey said.

And you know prayers? I spit back,
my baby teeth and his flying pebbles
meeting in the middle,
before the pebble flew past the tooth,
to me,
into me,
and into the cinder block behind me.

He rode away on a dark horse,
and I yelled after him, my diamond eyes-turned-dangling pendulums in 2 quarter time,
“judge me and die. Judge me and die. I am Novina whom Mother loves.”