Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #19, March, 2001 : -- -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7  8 -9 -10 -11 -12
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Mary McGinnis: Trail of Songs

                 

APPLEBANANA BABY

Be an Indian man with curly hair
like a friend of a friend's,
ride the snake out from Lukachukai;

put a motor under the snake
and make room for me on its back,
be an Indian woman wearing an applebanana
shirt, be a Christian man, I don't care,

be slow as a rock, slow as wind being still,
be light as light; come with lamb and salad
in your pack, come with a flute and a bag of red corn,
a bag of purple corn. Be a baby if you have to,

be whatever it takes: a construction worker,
a teenager on a tractor. Open your eyes
and notice me inside the surprise of my skin.
Banana baby, frog in flight, we are not what we seem.

We are more than skin, less than breath,
more than lies, lesser, lesser than sacred spit.
Talk with stones and trowels and trucks, talk
in your sleep, wake up and jump into the center

of a dream where the lost is found,
bells ring and a boy without two hands
turns into a dove. Spring is here, lifting
the whole, dusty face of your town.

Come on, applebanana baby,
the seeds are flying in all directions,
in all directions.



Copyright © 2001 Mary McGinnis.

About the poet.

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Issue #19, March, 2001 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.