Waterbaby
NIKKI WALLSCHLAEGER
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Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.
This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
For Eileen (1928–2017)
Losers, like autodidacts, always know much more than
winners. If you want to win, you need to know just one thing
and not to waste your time on anything else: the pleasures of
erudition are reserved for losers. The more a person knows, the
more things have gone wrong.
UMBERTO ECO, NUMERO ZERO
When I’m singing blues, I’m singing life.
ETTA JAMES
Contents
Middle Passage Messaging Service
All Kinds of Fires inside Our Heads
Black Woman on a Plane, Twenty-First Century
Women Are Doomed to Be the Angels of Love
When the Devil Leads Us Home and Yells Surprise
Notes on the New Reconstruction
♦
Astral Traveling Got Me F*cked Up
A Dying Mule Kicks the Hardest
♦
Why Do I Feel So Old When I Look So Young
The Lunch Counter of Eternal Tears
