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October 11, 2018
[Nursing](
[L. Lamar Wilson](
When you ask where I want it, the knife youâve made of your tongue âso swollen
& hard it fills the empty spaces left by bicuspids, lost to excess of sweet, to child
Or adult playâI 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
Whoâs 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 beardâs amber & frankincense trail from neck to clavicle, & when
Youâve left your mark there, where weâve agreed you may first suck the cursèd river
Coursing to stain my fleshâs surface redder, where only Iâll see it long after youâve departed,
You let the perfumed purse youâve gathered inside your mouth drip onto my meager chestâs
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 Hereâwhere bare backs kiss this floorâs knotted tiles & your cedar bed towersâso far from home.
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Copyright © 2018 L. Lamar Wilson. Used with permission of the author.
[L. Lamar Wilson reads "Nursing."](
About This Poem
âI 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 marriageâand 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 didnât want to stay after the touching ended. Staying matters to me, so touch happens less and less. Like those old black womenâalmost all âdead,â or, more aptly, free of their embodied limitations nowâI hold fast to memories of joy, of stolen pleasure, of unlimited possibility to survive. I wonât let hatred taint my verse. This poem joins an amalgam of memories Iâm 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 oneâs essence an immortal, indestructible being.â
âL. Lamar Wilson
[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 Womenâs low-residency MFA program. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
Photo Credit: Tyrus Ortega Gaines
[Sacreligion](
Poetry by Wilson
[Sacrilegion](
(Carolina Wren Press, 2013)
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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.](
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