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70 Grits When my body aches with longing for a man’s shape and my sometimes man’s too stupid to know when a woman’s tossing all her up-bringing and circumspect ways out into the damp night, giving up her good sense, pragmatic Christian decorum all for some good loving and the feel of water swirling in her belly-bottom; when i wake to a pale dawn, the sky still stained with an old storm, whimpering like sobs after the mauling of the speckled limbed dogwood outside my window; and i feel to crawl into your bed, Mama, thick with the smell of Bengay, mint ointment, old French talc and the stale of your under-things laced with woman’s scents; i cook. i cook bacon back and with the grease, scramble some eggs with milk, peppers, onions, bake biscuits with sugar, fry chicken gizzards, sweeten the black insides of my coffee 71 till it’s thick as molasses and sharp, and i turn me some grits—white soft love in the pot, cooked long till this smell of some childhood morning is you, always there to hold me, to feed me, Mama, that soft belly of grits, caressing everything awful and hard to a watery, bland, dreamless porridge, like unconditional love. and after, i smoke and drift into the dream lake of bubbling grits, softly cooing in my ears. Was a time i would call you and cry on the phone. these days, i work some grits and smoke. ...

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