ONE
You eat with your right hand.
Prop the broom away
from your body. Strike.
A roof of wool, a bed of skin.
A follicle for food. A hand of error
and infliction is given to all.
The left hand heeds
prayer beads. The left hand
signals retreat.
What is your good name?
Where are you from?



TWO
I was taught not to ask for more.
I took the smallest pieces,
left the last on the plate to deities,
bullies and elders. Train eyes,
the elders said, to want
what is already yours. So I stayed
out in the woods till jackals howled
and picked from the streets what was
lost or cast off. Sang songs
to a kindergarten teacher
who wore pink checkered dresses
and spoke in English when cross.
Now bigger is a sign of competence.
Was my heart stitched for this?
I am drifting into a world of enquiry
to quantify, qualify, even as
around me, summer performs.
Beetles, coal stunned in sun.
And little birds in gray
sing madly for food or love.



THREE
You are placated
with offerings
hollow as midnight’s ankles.
Day life postpones impulses
to the future as though it sits
ahead with a symbol for permanence.
In night life you dream 
a daughter. Skin a beast.
You can tell you are good.



FOUR
Bottles you save
because they can still hold
something of use. Two,
three gimcracks allowed.
The window sill incumbent
with the regret of envy.
Come in. Come in, said the
obedient citizen to the witch.
Come in. Come in. Entries
of flowers in bloom.



FIVE
I know you by your walk
because we are from the same country.
If you were here to give safe passage — mosquitoes,
daddy-long legs, mollusks underwater — would
be left to their job. West surrenders
to a new language. Bellwether.
Billingsgate. Bivouac. Let us go
south. Let us go east. We come to be
courted. Or hands emptied.



SIX
Conquered by ingredients: we replace salt
with sugar. Butter with milk.
We believe others know better
because we’ve arrived to find our place taken.
Your hands blunt from obeying.
Your name is happy days
and wisdom. What cannot be explained
is accepted. Our forefathers went
to bed with salted butter tea in their bones.
You are living the life given.
You drink sweetened tea at three
in the afternoon. Adjust cup to saucer.
Your gullet adhering to silence.



SEVEN
The first drop of blood
appeals to a past. We learn
to love the land of our
fathers and mothers because
we love them.
Walk on your forehead.
Where you are
is who you are.