LineAGE

 as if it was 
a premonition 
a mapping of circumference  

on her swelling belly
mother of all stripes
linea negra
a  single line, simple
as an incision
beginning 
 
not last line but the line before, 
that hop, skip and jump to shore 
carefree as a rope, until
you, and you and you and you
are roped in and made to form
another line, troop inside,
memorize, repeat line
after line

no loving in this repeating
which brings us
to lineage, conundrum

at hand, under the womanhood
the line
you must not cross     
is given

it hems you in
from head to toe
the line

as manual, precipice, edge, abyss
delineation of nots

"the better to keep you safe my dear!"
but I always wanted to be an unwed mother

red and unread
lines are everywhere, demarcations   
of otherness, the puzzled
dashes of word processors
who cannot put Alif-Laila
under their spell
check-mate baby!

when the line falls in love  
we are couplets now

drowning in our own
dead weight of symmetry  

and what did you see my darling young line?

I saw daddy long lines of control mark twin concertinas
I saw the spiraling tongue lashing
I saw the separation of nations, 
I saw the sentence and the hanging
giving birth to the orphan

line of no man's land
who  mourns a lost language bleeding at the margins
as migrant lines of birds
cross his barbed throat

Somewhere down
the line that stops
galloping on the electric
page above the hospital 

bed slumps into two sad elbows, becomes
the four lines of the coffin
a quatrain from which
there is no escape