Berlin Is Hard on Colored Girls

Perhaps a strange woman
walks down from the corner 
into my bedroom
wasps nest behind her ears
she is eating a half-ripe banana
with brown flecks in the shape of a lizard 
kittiwakes in her hair
her armpits smell of celery
perhaps
she is speaking my tongue
in a different tempo
the rhythm of gray whales praying
dark as a granite bowl
perhaps
she is a stone.

I cross her borders at midnight 
the guards confused by a dream 
Mother Christopher's warm bread 
an end to war   perhaps
she is selling a season's ticket to the Berlin Opera 
printed on the lid of a dim box
slowing the growth of rambler roses 
perhaps   ice-saints have warned us 
the tender forgiveness of contrasts 
metal   silken thighs   a beached boat 
perhaps   she is masquerading 
in the american flag
in the hair-bouncing step 
of a jaunty flower-bandit 
perhaps
A nightingale waits in the alley 
next to the yellow phone booth 
under my pillow
a banana skin is wilting.