The Evening News

First rule of the road: attend quiet victims first.

I am kneading my bread Winnie Mandela
while children who sing in the streets of Soweto
are jailed for inciting to riot
the moon in Soweto is mad
is bleeding my sister into the earth
is mixing her seed with the vultures' seed
greeks reap her like olives out of the trees
she is skimmed like salt
from the skin of a hungry desert
Ganvie fisherwomen with milk-large breasts
hide a fish with the face of a small girl
in the prow of their boats.

Winnie Mandela     I am feeling your face
with the pain of my crippled fingers
our children are escaping their birth
in the streets of Soweto and Brooklyn
(what does it mean
our wars
being fought by our children?)

Winnie Mandela     our names
are olives     salt     sand
like the opal     amber     obsidian
that hide their shape well.
We have never touched shaven foreheads
together     yet how many of our sisters'
and daughters' bones whiten
in secret
whose names we have not yet spoken
whose names we have never spoken
I have never heard
their names spoken.

Second rule of the road:
any wound will stop bleeding
if you press down
hard enough.