Invocation
Marilyn Hacker
This is for Elsa, also known as Liz,
an ample-bosomed gospel singer, five
discrete malignancies in one full brest.
This is for auburn Jaqueline, who is
celebrating fifty years alive,
one since she finished chemotherapy,
with fireworks on the fifteenth of July.
This is for June, whose words lean and mean
as she is, elucidating our protest.
This is for Lucille, who shines a wide
beam for us with her dark cadences.
This is for long-limbed Maxine, astride
a horse like conscience. This is for Aline
who taught her lover to caress the scar.
This is for Eve, who thought of AZT
as hpoeful poisons pumped into a vein.
This is for Nanette in the Midwest.
This is for Alicia, shaking back her dark hair,
dancing one-breasted with the Sabbath bride.
This is for Judy on a mountainside,
plunging her gloved hands in a glistening hive.
Hilda, Patricia, Gaylord, Emilienne,
Tania, Eunice: this is for everyone
who marks the distance on a calendar
from what's less likely to "recur."
Our saved-for-now lives are life sentences
-- which we prefer to the alternative
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