there is something nasty
i noticed about you while cyber-
stalking your ex-girlfriend’s 
photo album on facebook
by Keli Stewart

cock feathers flirt   
early morning drip
and stutter. i mirror
cornfed thighs,
compare her
tinder. eyes like
a shih tzu’s, weepy,
half-hidden
sturdy enough
to suggest she might
lick your leg upon arrival
or give you a good
fuck before dinner
for the hell of it and not
clamor at the thing
cold at her midnight back
and then again moving
toward mouth at 3am
where drool has pooled
since my childhood. 

if she sees ghosts
and spits on sidewalks like
spittoon’s chaw and kicks
panties to whereabouts
unknown like can-can
dancers throwback thigh
and ruffle. how i do. how do i?
gunmetal of my toe
like a sandal’s sliver.
and if she wears a bra
and if you mind salt 

and crumb. nipples peel
like an onion
areola black watermelon
seeds and i wonder if you might
want a summer’s taste
and mumble seeds
in your mouth.
and if you eat the rind, 

if she shaves
and buys elotes from
the greasy hand cart
i have learned to trust
how mangoes ripen
on his plastic shelf
and kiss slits of cucumber
outside the currency
exchange during cloudbursts
and folly. 

and if she is a bad woman,
good girl or wild,
wolf i be.
if i should leave nappy
woolly or well enough alone
and have me stick ‘tween
your teeth like corn,
your covetous mouth
like a guest who eats much,
then leaves.

A Chicago native, Keli Stewart’s stories and poems have appeared in Meridians, Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, Letters to Fathers from Daughters, Torch Poetry, Hip Mama, Calyx and forthcoming in Reverie: Midwest African American Literature. She is a double recipient of the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center and is also an alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and Callaloo Summer Writing Workshops. Keli has received artist fellowships from the Augusta Savage Gallery’s Arts International Residency Program and Hedgebrook. Recently nominated for a Ragdale 3Arts Fellowship, she received her BA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College in 2002 and is currently an MFA Poetry student at Chicago State University. She is the mother of two wonderful sons and is currently at work on a collection of poems.