THURSDAY: as in thors day or thornsday
meaning the hammer god will save us from the roses,
the crude love left over from Wednesday.
Also: Thirstday. Meaning I cannot afford a drink until payday.

FRIDAY: Fishfry day. Some fish on your plate.
Breaded skin & fish heads gawking from the trash.
“Fish!” your father says, “Men fish!”
Meaning you are not a man,
if you don’t work & writing is not work.
Your tongue is a fish out of water.
You nearly die of thirst.

SATURDAY: for the god of farms & a haloed planet.
Also for evenings on the town: a lady’s satin
evening gown, the nightclub sashay.
But mostly for satellite t.v. As in a satchel full of time.
As in stars. As in saturnine. Meaning, I just sat
on the dock of the bed all day.

GOSPEL OF THE TWO SISTERS

GOSPEL OF THE TWO SISTERS

—after Tony Hoagland

Long ago two sisters lived in a small brick house beside a super highway. The
tall chatty one knew the first & last name of every animal in the galaxy. The
small quiet one could make her hair grow longer or shorter with no more than a
thought.

The pecan-colored sister said, “I wish I had the shiny exoskeleton of the
Monomorium Minimum,” & when the penny-colored sister squinted her eyes,
hair spilled across the floors & they had carpet.

But the girls had no other relatives or friends & eventually they grew sick of
each other. One day the sister with the gold hoop earrings said, the mastiff, a
large, powerful, short-haired dog is ancestor of the pit bull, the boxer, & the
Saint Bernard, but it is the ugliest breed of them all & then, after a few unusual
moments of silence, said: “Sister, do you ever wished we had a mother to braid
our hair?”

The sister with the banana-colored Bruce Lee-press on nails rolled her eyes &
though she was stone-faced, her hair began to weep & she looked suddenly
like someone who’d been walking in the rain.

I can remember how I came to believe in God. I was sitting one Sunday in the
front row listening to three dirt-old deacons sing an acappella “Amazing Grace”
when a trembling like fingers through a tub of water passed through me. I
opened my mouth & remembered the time my cousin Junebug held me in the
Sleeper Hold until I blacked out.

For many years afterward the sister that could sprint eighty miles without
stopping paced up & down the hallway waiting for the right sentence to worm
into her ear or push out of her mouth & the sister that could sleep underwater
sat in a rocking chair awaiting the same thing.