to mama who on the eve of my birth beat a bitch with a kool-aid spoon
for taking her eldest child's red balloon (if i wasn't wet-fisted, all hemmed
up inside cecelia, i'da jumped in)

to the bazaar of milk & afterbirth that once was her body, piping hot
almond dark with laughter & memories of fenced-in two-stepping
late night in a brownsville park

to mama's hands, mad stallions pummeling dough for biscuits, cherry-scented
butter-smeared fists or floured moons

to ms cloritha, professional crier for dilroy's funeral parlor (stuffed the
dead fulla who knows, once saw some geezer's toupee slid back like a
yarmulke, a woman's wig bangs in her ear, mourners too busy kiki-ing
in the back to tell the woman's kin her fall fell forward & dipped to the side
cloritha wailing all the while, earning her fifty bucks off the books)

to ms sheronda who daily bugged mama for dried black-eyed peas, swore
her son looked like a jackson (the eldest sissy, what's her face, bee bee, cee cee
you know, "centipede")

to the hungry black power thief who snatched nefertiti off our wall, public
enemy off the turntable, platter of mustard glazed tongue picked clean
in the kitchen sink

to cuban ruben cross the hall who loved tongue & chuck D, father
figure by george michael (also gone from the crates), who OD'd
at the tunnel (stuntin') in mama's leopard print dress