1. Virigina Reel of DNA
My mind plays the angles, sees the odds. It’s a streetwise mind, a Brooklyn mind, looking for bargains, seeking the best among what’s left. It isn’t a mind that notices potential, so I missed all those years of myself as a sheer beauty. But now, I see it, glimpsed in old photographs or today, in the faces of strutting teenagers on the street.
Oh I had boyfriends, but I never noticed if a man’s gate was open or locked shut. I didn’t recognize troubled hearts and spirits, the kind that can’t grasp and hold. I never said, I see no love here, no babies here. In those fertile years, I didn’t know what to look for and I didn’t ask.
But I am still right in there among the teenagers, single, stupid, vulnerably invulnerable, spinning from steady to steady, dancing a square dance with confused partners that might, if you’re still young and fertile enough, end up in a Virginia reel of DNA. I’m working the angles to keep my dream alive, to plant it, grow it, and make it real. I want to have a baby.