from hot comb to him.

I visited my friend Rachael whose husband left her for a younger

thinner woman.

Oh, wondrous and unsurpassable felicity is/ She

had slept on her face and her afro was flattened

on one side; I can't, the ancestors say

without a pick before heartache. So

that's why 'Blue Magic' hair grease

was left on the stoves edge. I refused

to wonder.

"So long as we are alive", I began my preach

while the blue bellies of the male mourning doves

sing for lovers on the dead branches of

the pear tree in her yard. "he will return

in an aberration, a streaky appearance

produced by the earth crushing the perspective

of a new moon".

 

"When i'm moved", I tell her, and when the stars

are alight in the night sky, I get but-naked and let

my Talisemu dangle from my nakedness between

him and home, between calm and the lawman. Between

a body levitated in love and the long poem I wrote of you

wearing those tan hose to cover the scars on your thighs. 

I visited my friend Rachael whose husband had left her

for a younger, thinner woman.

Then I drove home.

Reviews

[apennylate]

When I grow up, hopefully, my poetry can be a quarter as impactful.
Masterclass, and I say that, being in no mood to reach for positivity.
Thanks for the lesson, and thank you for being a badass writer.
Now I walk home...

-"So long as we are alive", I began my preach
while the blue bellies of the male mourning doves
sing for lovers on the dead branches of
the pear tree in her yard.-

[fallon]

This felt so real. Like earth in my hands. I feel for Rachael and I have been Rachael. I have felt heartache so severe that my hair went limp. But the more important concept here is that of friendship between women. You showed that so well. How it is simple and strong and unconditional. What a beautiful truth you have shared here!

[jacob erin-cilberto]

This sounds so much like Robert Creeley and his conversational poems...

You are so good at these, you had me there in the situation, first hand.

Her flattened on one side much like her heart was.
j.

[redzone]

Men as such pigs, Dana. We are taught, trained, and conditioned in this patriarchal society to be such. And women are trained to think that to be pretty, thin, and for Black women, to have straight hair. And, to accept all this as the way things are and just be happy. Of course, the ghost of "him" will haunt and continue to make her feel unloved, and somehow not worthy of love and kindness and being treated as an equal human being. The haunting of oneself, for feeling guilty for his leaving.

I found myself, sitting in your car after this visit to Racheal, asking you to pull over and got out and just screamed!! Hoping for an end to all these scars.
Curt