You Called Life, but Did It Answer?

Sunday Cento (NaPoWriMo #26) Mourners, ©1956 Gordon Parks. National Gallery of Art (Free-to-Use) I am not seaworthy.Look how the fish mistake my hair for home. in my younger yearsbefore i learnedblack people aren’tsuppose to dreami wanted to bea raelet This peoplemasturbate in winding sheets.They have hacked their children to pieces.They have never honoured a single treatymade with anyone, anywhere. I am a girl among men and womenrobed in beauty butwithout faces. Their tonguescut; I am derided. Is there an endto these knives? Though you may hear me holler,And you may see me cry—I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,If you gonna see me die. Somewhere between Mother Nature and father timeThere’s a spiraling myth aboutA fatherForever chasing the rising sonI knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.i have grown oldremembering the garden,the hum of the great catsmoving into language, the sweetfume of the man’s ribas it rose…