Desert Women, Born of Babylon

Empty, not a vessel nor a vassal,
hungry for mother names, know
naught of Nimrod, but his Babylon fame.
And his wife, was she God reaching,
or God living in one language, one
people, before babble, before crumbs,
before scattered alphabets?

Mothers carry mud feet from where
we come, dust a cloak of shattered towers
on shoulders, babies slung across broken
chests. Disperse over Dafur or Dimashq,
as unnamed as Nimrod’s wife, collect
dung along the way. A head with two
hands, carry precious water. As unknown

as a vulturous sky, read signs of sleet
on bared foreheads in a buzzard picked
heat, a sudden water in red dryness.
Between letters, behind words
white flame bursts bright, anoints
Nimrod’s wife and all her cognation—
snow, paper, child, being of light.




‘Desert Women, Born of Babylon’ appeared in
Central Avenue issue #30, May 2005