It’s a shame when grown-folks see it get to
____storming and blow it’s time to go in. What more
are porches made for if not for rain? I know if it
____were honey and fell steady as it does now
to make sweet candy of the roads, we’d be out there. Hell,
____we’d be swimming in it, our bodies flat and
laid down like a burden, arms up, even ladies’ legs spread:
____just do anything to be both brown and sugar again.
Though I can see that stickiness fixing itself to the brain,
____treating it like a can, rusting it, then those prayers
calling out please, Lord, open up with water till their skins would
____no more hum with flies, till every face was clean.
I’ll take my gamble though, belly-sliding through that bee-spit.
____So go on, call me childish, but—be honest, man—
won’t you join me? Won’t you help me find a road to make
____a cross out of us, Southern since it’s us,
where the only place to go is for you to go in me?