When Women Kiss Bellies
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When I was six months in the baby drink
a luckless woman kissed my mother’s belly,
changed my fate with lips of smoke and scotch,
and I was turned like others at the touch.
When women kiss bellies, they only hope a bit.
When women kiss bellies, the rest is about knowing
the odds of any babies in the dark,
the definite wages of men on the march
When women kiss bellies, they are washing the future,
the corpse that will carry an unfolding child to the next life.
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A woman kissed my mother's belly.
Now lost within days of mercury mirrors,
searching for a safe house only slowly burning,
its throat an anthem red,
its smooth slab of certainty buckling,
I consider how the world moved infinitesimally,
floated everyone in wordless dark unreasoned ways
toward our series of fragile frames.
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