We learn love like part-time work
is who’s available.        Who’s here
and willing to worship the lamb
curl of our hair each morning
when the sun untucks us
                       from our marriage
bed.      We’ve been taught
   by mothers to be women
means to be a convenience store:
always open     to his advances, but
we learn           advances seldom come.
    To be a black woman means
    unwanted on every tongue
or black women like contranym,
    a kink           in the crown.
                        Language universal
against the autumn danger of our fall-
ing hips. He’s begging our lips
be rimmed more beige than brown,
             a light-
skinned shawty: black men’s want
born from 300 years   of white
             masters and rape—
is that too reductive
             for your comfort?
I want comfort
too, I hate to be
convenience store,    but our men
stay gone, made gone   or barred.
    How to love a man made risk-
    y when law’s around?
            And those still breathing,
                       black men left
to turn their stalks to the feeding
    sun,     they never let a lady be
enough when she’s too much.
Want a woman who knows her silence.
            We learn           a black woman
is everything    her mouth can do
    but talk.       Especially when she talks
loud     when she talks money
knowing damn well a black man
can’t compete in a white world
           and a bitch     who forget
don’t respect    his struggle.
He’ll find a white girl who does.
  She’ll make him feel
a man.              Black girl tongues
like guillotines. Always making eunuchs.
    This, their transformative
power. See       how she makes a man
   a miracle.      Raises him from beet roots,
   cultivates a garden in his chest,
when given
             a chance.       But chances
seldom come. A black woman changes
too,       how she makes herself
convenience store. She hates to be
convenient,     store her hope like
      lights, kept on for men
who know to pay
   for what they want.