Half the time I can’t tell my experiences apart from the ghosts’. A shirt my mother gave me settles into my chest. I should say onto my chest, but I am self-conscious— the way the men watch me while I move toward them makes my heart trip and slide and threaten to bruise so that, inside my chest, I feel the pressure of her body, her mother’s breasts, her mother’s mother’s big, loving bounty. I wear my daughter the way women other places are taught to wear their young. Sometimes, when people smile, I wonder if they think I am being quaintly primitive. The cloth I wrap her in is brightly patterned, African, and the baby’s hair manes her alert head in such a way she has often been compared to an animal. There is a stroller in the garage, but I don’t want to be taken as my own child’s nanny. (Half the time I know my fears are mine alone.) At my shower, a Cameroonian woman helped me practice putting a toy baby on my back. I stood in the middle of a circle of women, stooped over and fumbling with the cloth.
What do You think about The Best American Poetry 2014?
