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ABOUT RELIGION

After church

on Sundays

I learned to love

the gospel music

swelling up past garbage cans in the summer

backyards of my childhood armageddon.

Black shiny women

spicy as rocking pumpkins

encased in stiff white covers

long sleeved

silk against brick

and their rocketed beat

snapped like pea shooters

in the august time

while the fingered tambourines

hand heeled beat

rose through the air shafts

sweet and timely.

I hear the music filtered

through a heat wave

of my mother's churchly disapproval.

A skinny nappy-headed little girl

ran back and forth collecting

in my envy

coins wrapped in newspapers

and the corners of old sheets

that even my mother

grudgingly

flung down.