About Religion

After church
on Sundays
I learned to love
the gospel music
swelling up past garbage cans in the summer
backyards of my childhood armageddon.

Black shiny women
spicy as rocking pumpkins
encased in stiff white covers
long sleeved
silk against brick
and their rocketed beat
snapped like pea shooters
in the august time
while the fingered tambourines
hand heeled beat
rose through the air shafts
sweet and timely.

I hear the music filtered
through a heat wave
of my mother’s churchly disapproval.
A skinny nappy-headed little girl
ran back and forth collecting
in my envy
coins wrapped in newspapers
and the corners of old sheets
that even my mother
grudgingly
flung down.