AfroPoets Famous Writers

hands & holding


      1)
hands & holding
tongues & clit
go well together
the way the sun kisses the ocean at dawn
you have fallen
from the inside
of laughin congas
i hear you smilin
in the tunnel
women glissade
from tree limbs
their hips are so glad
to see you

      2)
in the night/ ochun's candles
make ether-glow waves
thru the hairs on yr stomach
i have spoken to stars
confined to black holes
from the milky way
they want to fall round you
i am envied by ladies
brighter even than the sun

      3)
you were curled
under the window
like kittens at mykko's tits
some visitors
took you towards the true rainbow
you slept
eyes wide water soft
i sit at the end of the rainbow
makin gumbo in a pot of gold

      4)
a trinidadian woman
tells me a hot-blooded man
dances like slow winds
in haitian halls/
yr touch is firm
like roots to soil

      5)
i cannot speak
yr eyes have
stolen my tongue
only knows
to move from yr lips
to yr thigh

Written by Ntozake Shange (1914-2018)

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