Improv, Week 8

Miss Rose
-Lucille Clifton

When I watch you
Wrapped up like garbage
Sitting, surrounded by the smell
Of too old potato peels
Or
When I watch you
In your old man’s shoes
With the little toe cut out
Sitting, waiting for your mind
Like next week’s grocery
I say
When I watch you
You wet brown bag of a woman
Who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia
Used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
Through your destruction
I stand up

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Then I met you
For the last time
Your feet laced in rope
And cut with thorns
From the field of your father’s farm
The barn was to the right
Paint peeling like a sunburnt back
Or
The coat of a snake
With twenty years of dirt in each follicle
Waiting to get back to where it belongs
And then I met you
You pair of hands with yesterday’s yellowing
That used to hold me in the daylight
Through all the Georgia smoke
I left it all fall
Then I stand it up again