"Nursing" by L. Lamar Wilson

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend October 11, 2018   Nursing   L. Lamar Wilson

When you ask where I want it, the knife you've made of your tongue           —so swollen & hard it fills the empty spaces left by bicuspids, lost to excess of                   sweet, to child Or adult play—I say nothing, only nudge your lips from the tip of my           nose past My own, to the dark forest of my chin, where I dare you to find,                     blanketed in lavender, Peppermint, & oud, the dimple a rock cleft decades ago. You who are           not the one Who's named me Ma, you who are young enough to have made a                 cougar of my mother & old enough to have sired me as you crammed for the Alabama bar.           That fat tongue You wave traces my beard's amber & frankincense trail from neck to           clavicle, & when You've left your mark there, where we've agreed you may first suck the       cursèd river Coursing to stain my flesh's surface redder, where only I'll see it long           after you've departed, You let the perfumed purse you've gathered inside your mouth drip             onto my meager chest's Tiny right eye, dilating now, begging like a young bud waiting to bloom       for mourning dew. You blow as it swells, then latch & shower it in wet expectation. Make         of me, sweet lord, The mother of some new nectar we misbegotten ones can nurse inside       & pass from breast To breast. Make of this hallowed hearth in my chest a pulsing womb,           an isthmus to anywhere but Here—where bare backs kiss this floor's knotted tiles & your cedar       bed towers—so far from home.                Copyright © 2018 L. Lamar Wilson. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I was loved into knowing my black life matters by old women whose fathers, husbands, and lovers were long dead by the time they resurrected them in pews, porches, and kitchens. These women survived acts of white nationalist terrorism, without their taint, and brought these men, who did not survive, to life in such evocative detail that I, too, fell in love with them. I grew up in a home with childhood sweethearts who have been avoiding public displays of affection for more than sixty years of courtship and marriage—and made four babies whole, complex forces of nature. I live in a body I felt for years no one wanted to touch until I realized they did, really badly, but didn't want to stay after the touching ended. Staying matters to me, so touch happens less and less. Like those old black women—almost all 'dead,' or, more aptly, free of their embodied limitations now—I hold fast to memories of joy, of stolen pleasure, of unlimited possibility to survive. I won't let hatred taint my verse. This poem joins an amalgam of memories I'm gathering, theirs and mine, to underscore our resolve never to beg others, especially white folk, to acknowledge what we already have: the liminal, syncretic freedom to make of any loved one's essence an immortal, indestructible being." —L. Lamar Wilson   L. Lamar Wilson is the author of Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013), a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award. He teaches at the University of Alabama and in the Mississippi University for Women's low-residency MFA program. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Photo Credit: Tyrus Ortega Gaines Poetry by Wilson   Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013) "Touched by Dusk, We Know Better Ourselves" by Sasha Pimentel "Center of the World" by Safiya Sinclair "The Blue Terrance" by Terrance Hayes October Guest Editor: Ross Gay   Thanks to Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Gay and our guest editors for the year. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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