TENZONE

Chicago to Patricia Ann

Can I help it that my maw is shaped

exactly like your body, that my fists

ache for the shake of you? Now you’ve been scraped

from Alabama womb, I can’t resist

your dumb unfurling. You beg me to be

your father, or your mother sporting breasts

of dime-store glass. My trusting refugee,

I really have to say, I’m unimpressed

by you. I idly sniff the sugared fat

around your heart, decide that I’ll combat

what’s soft—your pulsing light, that wretched tune

that’s building in your chest. Hey, take a look

around. This ain’t no lush, no warm cocoon,

no mama’s coo. You and your kind mistook

my glitter for consent, my unsnapped trap

for open arms. I’m only jukebox skin

and towered brick, a shifting god who’ll slap

you back to birth, girl, don’t you think this grin

means anything but glee. I own you now—

that Northern star’s no beacon anyhow.

So don’t you worry, child, I’ll raise you right.

I’ll skin your knees, I’ll soil your pirouette,

and whet your nasty little appetite

for light in alleyways. I’ll make you sweat

it out, that fever that so glorified

your coming here. Your parents’ naked dream,

that laughable and misdirected pride,

that harboring of points they can’t redeem,

that cramming all their faith in the debut

of something damned and weak. They named it you.

Patricia Ann to Chicago

Can I help the fact that I escaped,

exactly as they’d hoped, and that I missed

what Delta held for me? I saw you, draped

in textures I didn’t think could coexist—

steel and heat and blended silks. The key

to loving you is knowing that you’ve dressed

in lies to tempt the travelers. Oh, SweetPea,

mama says, child, know that you been blessed.

She sends me stumbling out into the flat

light of your clutching moon, my habitat

assured—the dingy parks, the alleys strewn

with glittered garbage, every cozy nook

shaped like astonished little girl. And soon,

aloud, you say my name—the shiny hook

of Northwashed noun, the awkward sound a gap

in air. Declaring us a fractured kin,

you vow me yours. Our heartbeats overlap

as you instill your loving discipline.

I learn to breathe the blue that you allow,

to readjust my history somehow.

My clanging harbor, almost overnight

you’ve wooed me with the terrifying threat

of bustling where I’m not. I crave your bite,

the way your every touch tends to reset

my temperature, that strut you strut beside

me, arcing, shielding, sewing shut that seam

where light leaks in. I’m one child, magnified,

so many of us, thousands, suddenly seem

so snug within your arms. I weep on cue.

I finally found religion, named it you.