There's always that one girl

with the astonishing smile
and the little sly gap
      between her front teeth-

charming because it screams of mischief.

There's always that one girl

with the literature voice
and the Zimbabwe speech
    sneaking in through her

points, arguments, metaphors. Identity.

That one, inexplicable, eccentric
     girl

who somehow teaches you
how take to take a selfie in the dark
nighttime balcony of an African university.

And somehow by the end of it,
as you are carried away to tomorrow
by the sound of her new sim-card voice,

you wonder why some victories
cannot be gold medals you can take
back home to your parents,

as she bus-drifts away back to that
spirited mother land
that hatched her onto a podium.

Then that new sim-card is discarded.
And some smiles you cannot forget.

The lads
Are streaming ****.
Don't be too quick
To scorn;
To understand my monologue
Know Sears stopped publishing
Catalogues
Of women in their ******.
And Geographic
No longer shoots
******* Amazons.
I don't claim it's right,
But boys are boys,
Night follows night.

Lush draped the walls
Gold freckles cheek to collar
I shook the dust from my lips
And lost hours

I left kisses on dead children
Old as the houses
I grew friends in the field out back
Under dead forests

Guilt
Shattered glass
They’ll cease existing
When I pass

Some hurts feel too often
Like old love

i still can't tell
if the longing
i felt
was innate
or passed
down to
me.

We enter the church and immediately
have to push through two dozen sobbing Italian women
dabbing dry eyes; their tissues only show
black and multi-colored smears. Amid the echoing
“Oh my Goawd”s, they lean down and kiss my sister’s cheeks,
but even in my best black cap sleeves, I am the taboo
to my cousin Janet, a woman as barren as the stone lot
in between her husband’s restaurant and Deihl’s Autoshop.

We find an empty pew, and watch as the men
stride down the aisle, contestants
in a cultural Miss America pageant where the wrong answer
gets you whacked. Their heavy brows
sink in condolence as they hand over stacks of bills,
every hundred becoming a pity penny
for all the moments Janet lost in her luxury-life
made shiny by diamonds and cars and fur coats
which can’t be cashed in for a second chance at a family.

The men have paid for the food, the china, the band
in the corner meant to fill the space of sadness—
a reminder that we live a lavish life.
My sister shifts in her seat and as a man walks
by she touches his jacket, and gasps.
He’s a god.

They stay up late
And complicate
The things they learnt at school,
They stab their shadows
In the dark
It's cunning and it's cruel.
They drink to sway
(It's all okay),
Their mouths taste sour and frightened-
It's all alright,
"the future's bright!"
This place has them enlightened.