For Jennifer

Pride Day parade
   your smile brave, you tell me of
   your father's letter
   a closed door in the face of your honesty.
   I stammer a dismay so deep
   it becomes a blunt instrument
   say something no doubt idiotic
   perhaps painful.
Later I will be sorry, both for your pain & my clumsiness.

If you were mine
   my lover
   my sister
   my friend

I would wrap you in the fierce love that grief demands
   but I am too aware-you are your own
   our only touch, the overlay of words

These fragments of story, spoken or dreamt
are all that I can give you
   I will sing your song again and again
   till time hears its resounding

Though your world has turned on its axis
   I will be there
   a voice when you wake in the night
   an undispersed comer of sound echoing
   you are alive
   you are alive
   you are alive.

Nicole

Shower Poem

Sometimes I just don't feel fresh,
-sometimes I just don't feel-
I go to the moon.
It represents me,
But not what's me about me,
What's everybody about me,
And my universal sisters...

   They have been there,
   Or they are there.
   They have known it,
   And they have been known.

   We've all been had.

Baby sister cries and cries.
We look at the moon and agree,
No words will ever teach you-who-do-not-know, you-who-do-the-knowing,
   With steel tongues,
   Steal.

My sisters know...
that's why,
-the moon makes my freshness irrelevant-
Dank, ancient, seeped with and discharging knowledge,
Connected to my yonic herstory,
I play in my ooze and know it is the key to heaven.

Lisa