is the shop on G where you sell your baubled
do-rags, huge yellow hoops, leather jackets
slumping with time, trading them for new
eccentricities: two steel robots for the house,
the male’s penis a thick nail pointing up.
It’s your source for feathers: wear on ears,
in hair, adorn that cursed denim vest
that frees your armpit tufts.
At fourteen, I cringe at men hooting
when you mow the lawn, at how you’re
46 & all my friends swarm you,
some fire they still talk about.
More than just black-snake hair, a fury.
I am afraid. I see I will enter it.
(You will be ashes then.)
I see it will enter me.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 4.
Oceana Callum mothers, teaches English Composition, and occasionally surfs in Orange County, California. She received an M.F.A. in poetry from California State University, Long Beach in 2005.
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