Love Should Teach the Children to Dance

After Ruth Forman’s “Poetry Should Ride the Bus”

love should scrape the batter from the sides of the bowl

skip the cracks in the sidewalk

believe in impossibilities 

and bust her knees running in the driveway

love should feel a charley horse where the sun don’t shine

see red in her panties

ask Ain’t I A Woman?

and forget to be docile

love should wear a suit of armor beneath her robes

suspect the inquisitor

learn latin

and denounce them canons

love should burn the candle at both ends

buy back the house on Lincoln Road

take the grand piano out of storage

and hear Ladybird woo chile like it were the first time 

love should teach the children to dance while the collards simmer

make a setting for Miles Dionne Marvin Aretha

how to always find more room at the table

and sing their song like it’s breath

love should get its sugar from every plump cheek

keep a can of tomato soup in the cabinet for weekend visitors

talk about video stores the culture war

and other things of yore  

love should give you something about which to write

for which to fight to find light

a thing to remember 

on what could be your last night

yes that is what love should do 

stand beside you prologue to coda 

reach out from beyond the boundaries of a page

raise you, become you, before you know it she undun you

and put you back together again