Day 20: Mother Buzzard

Tell a woman you like her dress,
Watch her hands fly down to her hips
Grinning, she will say these four words:
And it has pockets!

It's rumored women didn't get pockets
Because witches held poison in their pants
Casting spells from their trousers

Funny how women still carry it all
Basket on the head, baby on the hip
Infant to the chest, hands kneading dough

Your mother is the buzzard bearing a yoke
World in her talons, death in her mouth
Breathe, unable to smell the rot of death
Ask who has fed from grief, purified your air