Pocket

Kate - tell me of all the terrible things
that you do,
the yawning baskets stuffed with bread and vegetables
your pockets of meat and soap in wax.

You keep your children wrapped in brown paper,
peculiar parcels full of pattern,
their wet hair bound with string,
their skin all beached and brown.

When you speak
it is brittle and black
but then you sing and I eat,
enemies will find us with our arms knotted asleep.