Today's poem is by Tennison S. Black

He Wonders Why I Never Call
       

Birthed in Yuma by the daughter of a dairy farmer
who turned pecan picker for love when she
fell prey to the charms of a North Dakota cowboy,
I was born in simultaneity—
here and on the other side of myself.

If you flip me around, you'll see
I'm the same on both sides.
The morning after my birth
they placed me,
the violin in its case,

under the open window of their shack,
notes of dust and desert a hum in the screenless hole.
They were unprepared, my parents,
not because they didn't expect or want me
but because I lived when several before me had been lost

in pregnancy, delivery, or shortly after birth.
I was early, and tumbleweed isn't nesting material.
Mama called me shithead.
Kestrel called me a sound over the din,
a sound like the beat before the crack of a pebble on glass.

The hung air that breaks the noise open. Imagine a child
always chasing silence.
Scorpion called me stupid. I'll say it to her face.
The cowboy called me a girl. Which sounded
like he'd never like me anyhow.

Tweet

Copyright © 2024 Tennison S. Black All rights reserved
from Survival Strategies
UGA Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission