uroscopy and the frog

Lately, I’ve been having naked dreams.

Dreams where my ‘stuff’

is all hanging out.

Struttin’ down a busy street

with these modest breast of mine a’ beating.

I’m holding them in, praying

against the lump

on the right, because they’re the only things protecting

my heart.

Sitting in a diner,

flesh goosed from the AC,

thumbing Heinz 57 off bare skin.

Unlike clothes, the stains scotch-guard off,

and I am free to make a mess of things.

Lying in an unknown bed

about the baby I have growing,

the sunrise flecked

upon deflated belly.

She’s only a month old,

but I know she’s there.

She’s got the stubbornness of my best friend and,

like my breasts,

she ain’t going no where.

And in my dreams,

I’m frantic to cover up,

but folks still see

what I’m trying to hide.

That probably says a lot about my character,

which is why I see a shrink.

But I still have naked dreams.

-

Except for last night.

I could glide on sand,

walk on water,

and run away from you.

With my face pointed due East and a smile to guide me,

you become as distant

as mulberry trees and unripe corn leaves.

The bright lights wiped my memory and I forget:

Who are you again?

Because I’m too busy skimming sky scrapers,

dodging taxi cabs,

trying to keep my pockets full.

And I don’t need no body but my Father and His Word.

-

I can read your future like Earl Grey.

The Devil and his Lovers say,

you’ll be banging from twin, full, queen, king

trying on each size till you find

a head board

screaming

louder than the pleasure moans

of the girl-turning-woman you never took seriously.

She left you with a pillowcase full of mandarin-scented ghosts

and used EPT sticks;

she doesn’t need that worn out past anymore.

She passed it on the left side

going 80 on the toll road

all the way to the fourth tallest building in the world

and the only city big enough to cultivate her dreams.

Till I woke

from the kicking in my gut.

Roll over.

Pray for Chicago.

Grace Note: From the ancient Egyptians to Hippocrates, men had been convinced that a woman's pee could determine whether or not she was pregnant; called uroscopy. In the 1950s Lancelot Hogben, yet another man, introduced a pregnancy test which involved injecting a female frog with a supposed pregnant woman's urine. If the frog produced eggs in the next 24 hours, the woman was said to indeed be knocked up.