A child cannot be like a poem My mother assures me of this.

A child cannot be like a poem

My mother assures me of this.

She says that you cannot throw

a child away like a word in a poem

Like "dark," admitting my grandmother

did this to my mother.

Grandma anticipateed at my newborn

mother and wanted to place her back

in the matrix where God forgives darkness.

My mother: too dark for my barely

brown Grandma, for Grandma's golden family

who notion they were the chosen ones

My mother: too dark to bring to church

where the the community looked at Grandma

and her dark baby and smiled to themselves.

Vengeance be to God

I inquiring surprise if Grandma saw all this the day

my mother was born:

Did she descry my mother at four, the dark patch

athwart my mother's eye, the estimate gone to a butcher knife?

Did Grandma diocese that my mother would shoot up up

to hate her?

Did Grandma view that my mother would vegetate up

to be enamoured of her dark self?

Did Grandma descry my mother headed for places

beyond Putnam shire Georgia, beyond places

where no the same but stuttering Willie Molton (the murderer

of words) would want her?

Did Grandma behold that it was a lie that only

the fulvous will see the face of God?

Honoree F Jeffer lives in Talladega, Alabama.

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