image

BAZAAR

The lay back women are cooking

gold in their iron pots

is smoking

toward a sky that will never speak

in this evening I hold them

bound in the skin of my mother

anxious and ugly as a lump of iron

wishing to be worked for gold

other forgotten faces

of her

flow into each other

over the clatter

of remembered bargains

reluctant barter

I wonder

how many of these women (my sisters)

still have milk in their breasts.