**Poem: "Chances"**

Chances

The rest of the world has lived like this for years.

We only begin to see the cobwebs on the beams,

smell smoke of our own flesh, a bomb on every corner,

and DVD collections do nothing to preserve the season.

Tonight my big chance has to do with taking my ponytail down

instead of securing an orderly stripe

down my itchy back, no brush in the morning,

after banana, prior to toast.

I leave it for him to plait into knots of love,

distrust and the idle flies of memory

that buzz our bed.

Nat King Cole is not for me on the stereo downstairs.

It is a lesson for his children, sleeping on couches,

on what a Negro used to be in a world of

picket fence pearls and stay-by-night Moms,

Dads in freshly pressed slacks, a fire on every corner,

perchance for them to sleep and to wake,

Pokemon purged from their ten-year old heads.

In the same morning, my head a nest of indiscretion,

foggy acrobatics in the raw August row,

they all return to home,

his curls, my love's grey curls,

unbattered by my ineffective hands.

CAR  8/23/04