(a satirical elegy for Wanda Coleman)

Didn’t she recognize the ostinato of Wanda’s bony loneliness? / Didn’t she realize when Wanda scarred the schoolyard, her hair’s first draft made black girls titter?

We climb toward the rumored grave / of a Native American healer, the earth / a vertigo of blackness and exposed / root beneath our palms, pressing up / through the waves of molten leaves, /

Airport lights gleam through the humidity like the slicked / teeth of a shelter dog. All of them wait for the war to start again. /