Carolina Prayer

Let the blood if your belly must have it, but let it not be of me and mine. Let my momma sleep. Let her pray. Let them eat. Let the reverend’s devil pass over me. Let the odds at least acknowledge us. Let the breasts be intact, the insulin faithfully not far, and let the deep red pinpoint puddle its urgency on a pricked fingertip. Let the nurse find the vein the first time. Let the kerosene flow and let my grandma praise her bedside lord for letting her miss another winter. Let me be just a little bit bitter so I remember: Your columns and borders aint but the fractured, the broke clean, the brownest gouges in the blades of our great-great-great-shoulders. Let me leave and come back when my chest opens for you wider than your ditches did to engorge my placeless body. The mosquito-thick breath in your throat coats my skin and it almost feels as if you love me. Let the AC drown out the TV. Let the lotion bottle keep a secret corner til Friday. Let Ike, Wan, D-Block, all my brother’s brothers ride through the weekend. Let the cop car swerve its nose into night and not see none of them. Let us smell rain. Let the breeze through an oak hymn the promise that keeps us waking. Let the cicada unwind while hushpuppy steam slips out the knot of a tourist’s hand, and let him hear in it legends of how hot grease kept the hounds and the lash at bay.