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  • Love Oil
  • Kwame Dawes (bio)

I

I saw how they trimmed you down, called you Rosie, like a pet dog,

and you smiled and called the boy same age as me, Mister, like you calling

love. How you grabbed him up from the grass when fire ants took at us in the yard,

and you made your face like it was your own feet aflame with sting;

and you bawled me down for being such a fool for not knowing no better than to take the boy

out into the yard like that, telling me to go get my legs all washed off

stead of standing there with my eyes all wet like a fool or something worse.

Saw how you laid him down and sung your song oiling your palms

soothing him like a baby his eyes drinking you in. [End Page 325]

II

You complain of the arthritis in your legs when the rain gathers over the swamp

and I drive through the fog to find you and fill my hands with sharp Bengay

and I love those legs, mother, love those veins, green on your tender yellow skin,

with songs you never sang for me, Mama with tender I never felt from you.

Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes, a widely published poet and critic, is author of six collections of poems, the most recent being Shook Foil, Requiem, and Jack Jacobus. His critical essays have appeared in Ariel, World Literature Today, Critical Quarterly, DoubleTake, London Review, and The Journal of West Indian Literature. He is an associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina.

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