To the Poet Who Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet Who Happens to Be a Woman

I

I was born in the gut of Blackness

from between my mother’s particular thighs

her waters broke upon blue-flowered lineoleum

and turned to slush in the Harlem cold

10 PM on a full moon’s night

my head crested round as a clock

“You were so dark,” my mother said

“I thought you were a boy.”

II

The first time I touched my sisteralive

I was surethe earth took note

but we were not new

false skin peeled off like gloves of fire

yoked flameI was

stripped to the tips of my fingers

her song written into my palms my nostrils my belly

welcome home

in a languageI was pleased to relearn.

III

No cold spirit ever strolled through my bones

on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue

no dog mistook me for a bench

nor a treenor a bone

no lover envisioned my plump brown arms

as wingsnor misnamed me condor

but I can recall without counting

eyes

cancelling me out

like an unpleasant appointment

postage due

stamped in yellowredpurple

any color

except Blackand choice

and woman

alive.

IV

I cannot recall the words of my first poem

but I remember a promise

I made my pen

never to leave it

lying

in somebody else’s blood.