PRELUDE

Elegy with Grown Folks’ Music

• “I Wanna Be Your Lover” comes on the kitchen radio
• and briefly, your mother isn’t your mother—
• just like, if the falsetto is just right, a black man in black
• lace panties isn’t a faggot, but a prince,
• a prodigy—and the woman with your hometown
• between her hips shimmies past the eviction notice
• burning on the counter and her body moves like she never
• even birthed you. The voice on the radio pleads
• “I wanna be the only one that makes you come
• running.” Some songs take women places men cannot
• follow. Spinning, she looks at but doesn’t see you,
• spinning, she sings lyrics too fast for you to pursue,
• spinning, she doesn’t have time for questions like:
• What is this nasty song and where did she learn
• to dance like that and why, and who is this high-pitched
• bitch of a man who can sing like a woman and turn
• your mother not into your mother but a woman,
• not even a woman, but a box-braided black girl, a fast
• girl, a chick, a Vanity 6 and how far away she is from you
• right here in the same living room, dancing
• with the song’s hook in her throat. And you hate
• the voice coming through the radio because another
• sissy has snatched your dreams and run off with them
• and because you’re young and don’t know the difference
• between abandoned and alone just like your mother’s
• heart won’t know the difference between beat
• and attack. She’ll be dead in a decade and maybe
• you already know what you’re losing without knowing
• how, but you’re just a boy for now and your mother
• is just a woman, just a girl, body swaying, fingers
• snapping and snakes in her blood.