My flesh song, / a growing plot of womb. / A woman’s life mere and / common if she is blessed. / Chickens gossiping in the courtyard. / Hungry children taught / the languages of millet and yam. / 

I long for your voice all over my skin / pirouetting around you. / Tip toes around the fold of your name, /

I’m not stating explicitly that I am Latino, / because I am not exactly Latino. Instead I’ll say / meeting my father awoke a nation inside me / and my tongue began forming his Spanish. I’ll say / making patacones is a spiritual experience— / a prayer. And the browning sizzling disks— / an answer. 

(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?