Poems
THE BAKER'S DAUGHTER
I flow downstream, north-mad, beneath
the netherworld of dreams: not air, but sea
and stream and creek: a kind of death wrought
from the kin of love: in theatres world over,
your iambic flourishes cast me astrew: impresario
and scholar, you make literal the shadows:
too mindful, we die to our truer selves, calling father!
But the fathers, all air, walk as ghosts over the grave ground.
BUCKET POEM
Too many eggs and the bucket's holed-bottom empties
from the heads of African women shells: sand seeps
through children-buckets: meanwhile, in classrooms, my
brother cries "Buck-et!", chicken-noises, detention-
sent and bucket-laden, trudging schoolyards, wrappers and
coke-cans: grandmothers keep bucket by bed;
their piss clamours rudely through aluminium nights: into
black women bending by rivers, eggs, hens, and urine
the flotsam of oceans poured in and out of buckets.