my imperfect mouth names

alena hairston/elen gebreab

Motherlessness is imprecise, its cutting
leaves no pattern in the stillborn
rejection of ordered despair.

I try to move my mouth
to make good words.
I am quiet.
No one talks to me
with flowers in their teeth.

When I touch my thighs,
the sciatic swelling reminds me of your hips,
how they were round in the wrong
places, even when I kneaded them
night after ordinary night of late shows
and infomercials, each an advertisement
for the other.

My imperfect mouth names
your perfect cities:
Massawa; Mendeferi; Keren; Asmara; Adi Quala.
Your rich places; my poor speech.

A map of your country
is shield protecting the one of me
from the all of history.

He rode all the access
routes on the detours
of your body.

The English That Works In Easy Steps
workbooks for you who worked more than books
could make you, night after night of sponge
and syringe somewhere in the nether halos of mountain-
tuned wealth, the kind that has to be kept,
patted, wiped, oiled, those pasty spinsters
who pull your arm, nightly, daily crooning,
“I'm so glad you are here dear.”
They never say your name
or they have never asked,
yet you memorize the arching consonants,
and arrogant vowels of their own, pulled tight
in the corners of their monied mouths,
lipless from idle wealth.