the neighborhood kids would always laugh
when my mother turned her stereo up high,
blasting gospel music for everybody on our street.
they laughed harder whenever they’d hear her praying;
sometimes in quoted scripture, and sometimes
in a frenzied language nobody could understand.
but even then I knew the world was strange—stranger
than my mother ever was. some winter nights
at dinnertime, these children would come knocking
from bare houses, small faces pinched with hunger.
my mama didn’t sing then, but stirred warm pots on the stove
while they waited, tongues grown thick in their faithless mouths.
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