Rice: Poems

Living On What

138 Living On What (Used to be If we put out a call It meant I need you Please come I am putting out a call for Carolyn Rodgers, poet.) Stay is what they always say without thinking And live on what they never seem to realize I have the need to always know Please speak to what is required For staying for whole breath There will be no tempting no luring in With any found-out favorites Pardon me as I look around Where is that hair that does the Lindy Hop with water? Which are the noses that throw fists back up at burly wind? I might can wait a few more minutes longer But never can I stay I am black molten woman Poured out just this way I get all over everything That is how I stay Summer or winter My coat doesn’t change I require the same Genuine brown touches More than insurance or tenure Garlic and goldenseal are good 139 But life supplies of both Still incomplete me Keep your state-of-the-art StairMasters And give me the wicked windy climb To the top of a lover’s sooty sweet arms Give me I need The soft calloused open hands of my sisters Spotting for me As I trip and trampoline Each day for the truth Used to be In the misting night We would go looking for each other Do we still? Or are we now accepting Just what they say That some of us Are And will stay Missing forever My species is not extinct But we have been told Not to look for each other anymore With the hands she helped give I look for the woman Who peeled the Sunday girly gloves away Off Black woody fingers Twenty years ago today As I turned the pages of her first poems And she gave me good reason To stay ...