Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!

On a Picture of the Buddhist Monk Pema Chodron


Do I want to look like this? Women
with that playfulness in their faces, not
childish, but elfin, as if they have learned
how to shift the world, slightly, and let it
slip down the ice of its own melting. Women
who have been lost but not
hidden; clear-skinned,
wide-awake, their unmade selves
neither genderless nor fixed. I don't know where
their genitals are. If heart
is the center, do they feel the tug
of longing there? What blossoms?
In the brain? Belly button?
Where?
Is the clitoris throbbing?

Written by Toi Derricotte

<----> SEND THIS POEM TO A FRIEND! <---->

Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge