slick
as a snake running naked
through the trees a kid under
each arm looks back smiles her gap-toothed
smile ducks behind
an elephant ear never to appear
again.
From
every corner of the town women rattle
cups stoke-up stoves send plumes
of smoke racing like horses
their daughters can ride skin against
skin into the hills where the warriors
wait dangling lucky
rings for them to grab onto.
The
woman whose skin's slick as a snake slides along
the bank of a quickening stream sniffing out
clams, frogs and the nests of salamanders stopping for
a breath when the sun slips behind the horizon and her appetite's
sated.
Last
night she slept with her sisters in her father's house tuned her guitar
mended her mother's
gown. Last night began
the waining of the hunter's moon someone harvested
a lamb carved a pit
from the trunk of the largest tree. The man will
soon return and the door will close behind him.
must I leave
my home wear a new name lose my luck never speak out again
That
same night having rested
long enough the woman whose
skin's slick as a snake turned slowly
in her bed stroked the
kids coiled close beside her then packed
and left in the last of the dark
. . .
Someday
you might glimpse a hip a shoulder caught
in a flash twist of thigh;
you'd
swear you'd passed before respectful as
neighbors living in the mist maybe exchange
a muted sigh.
