Poem: On Fisher

Growing up on
The porches of sunset
Houses I would trace the skin
Around my mother's
Veins.
And like the rivers to
The north and east they would flow
Forever. Back
Then, when lips
Were pink and grass
Had not grown around
These warm white steps,
I would watch
The currents and float while she sang Long,
Long, Long, down my spine.


Then,
Outside, cream ran
Though the streets
And I watched while
Men came
To see,
To dance, like children
In the heat.

Soon
A flock much darker and colder
Than I had ever known,
Began to tear through vines
With teeth and I began
To smoke

And I would grow, dying
In July while
Swells of fat spilt
Over side-
Walks and into the eyes
Of strangers. Stinging up
Old yellow fascination of mothers
And sons.

And just like I had
Learned, from the women sweating
On their summer
Porches, I threw
Stones down front
Street, and laughed
While the hungry sucked
And listened
For the flow of rivers.