When We Get Together

we give it up to the drummer

between silences

stroke the mighty bass with our toes

our nipples

crashing

cymbals

ting-ting-ting-ting-tinging

headboard a sweeping piano

we strum the hell out of guitars with elbows composed of love songs

lips double-dipped honey blows the flute

our band plays regularly in the middle of the night

we don’t care who hears the music

–By Margie Shaheed

© 2017 by Margie Shaheed

 

Love Poem #135

from our bed I watch you rub

peanut oil on your naked brown body

toasted from a hot shower

you tell me the scientist

George Washington Carver

used peanut oil to massage the limbs

of polio patients to help rebuild muscle

I tuck this fact away under the edges of my afro

cuz right now I barely hear you

my temperature’s rising like mercury in August

–By Margie Shaheed

© 2017 by Margie Shaheed