A child's hand smears a wall the reproof is bitter
wall contrives to linger child, punisher, gone in smoke
An artisan lays on hues: lemon, saffron, gold
stare hard before you start covering the whole room
Inside the thigh a sweet mole on the balding
skull an irregular island what comes next
After the burnt forests silhouettes wade
liquid hibiscus air
Velvet rubs down to scrim iron utensils
discolor unseasoned
Secret codes of skin and hair
go dim left from the light too long

Because my wish was to have things simpler
than they were memory too became
a smudge sediment from a hand
repeatedly lying on the same surface
Call it a willful optimism
from when old ownerships unpeeled curled out
into the still nameless new imperium Call it
haplessness of a creature not yet ready
for her world-citizen's papers
(Across the schoolroom mural bravely
small ships did under sail traverse great oceans)
Rain rededicates the exhumed
African burial ground
traffic lashes its edges
the city a scar a fragment floating
on tidal dissolution
The opal on my finger
fiercely flashed till the hour it started to crumble