Woman 

Vermillion
is the colour
of devotion. 

Cover your head
This thin translucence 
will protect you 

Laugh softly,
and softly walk
like gentle rain

Pull a smile across 
the thin lines 
of your face

Wear modest pastels 
Never scream,
my grandmother said

Mother, barely twelve
with scuffed knees
and trees to climb still
laughed and jounced out
to adopt stray dogs

Forty years gone 

Time sprints like 
running water 
or quicksilver
and disperses what it must

But some things remain.

Don't wear shorts, look down,
Slouch so your breasts 
don't really show
Tie your hair back
Keep the boys calm 

Cross your legs - 
Be cheerful always 
Never scream

I, with scuffed knees at twelve, 
dungarees at eighteen
lovers lost, reclaimed and
discarded like driftwood
by twenty one

could never listen
with exactitude

I wear red
My eyes are dark

Sometimes, I scream.


Woman II

I could have a baby

enjoy its fat, spongy happiness
its open mouth like a kissing gorami
its curls like soft silk swirls
eyes, bright and round

I could chase it on all fours, a horse, supergirl
let toothlike gums bite down on my fingers
let tiny fingers encircle my life
softly and firmly

I could have a baby

but the moist hurling minute may
suck the fire dry, dull the eyes
soften the bite in my smile

replace the carefully cultivated
taste for success, stress and pleasure
with vacuity and love.

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