A First Walk
The poverty of Africa
is an engine, a pool
of mud where birth and death
mean mostly the same.
I cannot begin to understand
her ranting on the corner:
She sent her boy to cut me!
her jaw abscessed for weeks now
as a nurse I beg to look in
between her clenched and mighty teeth-
yellow polish
on her black black hands
studded with grains of sand
from a bottle nearly empty
congealed -
what kind of jaundiced beauty
this? How terrifying.
As passers-by stop to stare.
-at me, not her.
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