Her body is a plantation
I worked on for twelve years,
all of them solid, deep
summer, uncleared timber,
backwater, ditch and slough,
times of bad cotton, dark
nights and no crops, hard rain,
riding shotgun over my love.

I am thinking of the dead
who are still with us
on their way in the rain
to meet lovers or brothers
and my sadness waves back
like grain in the fields
of lost summers and summers
before that, fireflies in the dark
still young and beautiful
like starry nights, but for them
there is no moon, and for us
the same news we do not receive.

Just because I disagree with you doesn't make me ugly. It means that you have no better comeback and I'm most likely right as it is.

One night soon
someone
will strike a match
on a stone
and read my name.

She's our woman who does
so she is
here once a week
her name is Viv
she sweeps the floor
washes the tiles
arranges the papers in neat little piles
flicks a duster across a few things
breaks a saucer
and gently places it into the bin

You can't lose yourself trying to be someone else!