gift
By R. Erica Doyle (’97 -’99)

      i was in
      your mouth
      a verb
      unmodified
      my ankle
      this poem
      your eye
      this song
      of my wrist

      no between
      no beneath
      only this
      my teeth
      on your words

      here
      in a cloud
      on a hill
      sheathed in stone
      earth turned
      and wrapped dark

      you gave me
      this vowel

     i

Copyright © R. Erica Doyle. All right reserved. Used by permission of the author

R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1968 to Trinidadian parents. Her work has appeared in Callaloo , Ploughshares, Ms. Magazine, Black Issues Book Review, Blithe House Quarterly and Sinister Wisdom and has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2001, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Gumbo: Short Fiction by Black Writers, Best Black Women's Erotica 2, and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art. She is the recipient of various grants and awards, including an Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry and a Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. While living in Washington, DC for twelve years, she taught creative writing and developed literacy curricula for young children in the public schools; taught community writing workshops; and worked as a lesbian peer counselor, paralegal and domestic violence activist. She received her MFA in Poetry from the New School in New York City where she currently resides.

Copyright © 1997-2006 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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