THE RAVEN AS A WOMAN
the raven on pallas’s bust is but a girl like me
i see her in the mirror when i write to half-past three:
a woman made of dust and bone with eyes all clouded over
who’s wrapped in an abaya as she stares over my shoulder
her lips and hands and curves are mine, the ones the maggots eat
she’s only one more body twitching on the rafah street
she calls to me in thunder bay: azizati, come home
i am where you ought to be and i am not alone.