| Prom Night you kept a steak knife in your desk drawer with the sci-fi magazines fake wood handle, flimsy blade - but sharp enough you thought two hundred dollars in the toe of your summer dress shoes you counted it again and again calculating the cost of a plane ticket out of that town, not knowing the cost of staying either way your exit would be fast and metallic but you stayed to spend seventy of those dollars on a shimmering mermaid dress white roses you pinned to my wrist your closest friends, even we had never seen you dance but watching us you moved fast and sparkling through a rite of passage unlike the escape dreams we once shared | 1� 2� 3� 4� 5� 6� home |
|
When I am called When I am called, they will call me by my mother�s name. In a landscape of faces, flags, acronyms unfamiliar to her they will know I come only through her. When I am called, they will call me by my father�s name. Because he was everything that could have harmed me and everyone here knows his face. I will answer to my father�s name. When I am called, they will call me by my sister�s name. From the same beginning we are foreign people from the same home we love with divergent fever but for each moment of connection, I will answer to my sister�s name. When I am called, they will call me by my comrade�s name. Because she is ever apart from me in the same place. we met far from this crowd like trees woven together in the dark she led me to the gathering place, strange to her. And I will answer to her name. When I am called, they will call me by my child�s name. Because they and I were once he his need showed me what I could be. The little I gave served us both. I will answer to my child�s name. |