Baba Sits You on the Kitchen Table and Teaches You All the Old-School Curses

_ Say: I hope your lover is a broken tugboat. Say:
You will wake up in the body of Sacagawea
with white man allergies. Say: If you run over a fox,
you’ll take his heart with you and, one by one,
foxes will run into the highway, giving themselves
over to the night, and before you know it,
poof! there goes the ecosystem. Good.
Say: May you never see the old world.
Don’t say: your mama’s so fat. Instead:
your mama ain’t never made winter soup
of her dead husband, doesn’t know
how to take marrow and make heat,
uses both hands to roll dice,
motherfucker. Say: Son of a Mayflower.
Say: Daughter of the  American Revolution.
Good. Say: I hope your backyard
erupts into a field of three-leaf clovers
which smell unmistakably like wet dog.
Say: Your firstborn will be a terrible,
but dedicated, violinist. Say:
Your great grandparents will die,
and your grandparents will die, and
your parents will die, and you will
never quite remember the story
they always told about some town
with a name as braided as rope, some
kind of splinters in a man’s palms.
 

--MICHAEL MLEKODAY