Lula Bell – GWC Mag

—after Evie Shockley & Wille Cole

                       i bring to the new place, with sapsucker
           red door, your broad pockmarked face.

           what calls me to your wear, your daily
           broke-down breakdown, your burn-blue
backside—i cannot articulate, but i lean you
toward me, i do the carrying over the threshold,

            the jumping of the broom. truthfully i
            have never been against making a home  
salting a cast iron, starching a sweat-striped,
pen-stippled collar. but i am so unsure of

            what to fill it with: garlic bulbs, wobbly
dining chairs, pristine pickle jars, heirlooms,

                 yellow tomatoes, photographs and glass
      ducks to waddle along redwood bookshelf.  

                       and yes, you, poised and ugly, sturdy and
            speckled, black, content and still in the sunroom.