Ursula

She follows a trail well known, the wind blows its cover, wrapped around like a gown, pulled from dull marriage, she is crazy for others, her face a rite of passage, seduced by clubs and shown, she laughs with sequined lovers, sunshine dances down, she was / you are/ I am born, a kid of yellow troubles, but never uses scorn, on ship or ocean town, no candle can smother, the miracle of soft rebounds, she isn’t savage, and hardly makes you suffer, love might be slow in passing, but it’s a fine blue morning.

Tasha

You used to write to me then, of furs and feathers and winters, an innocent frightened pen, bloodied in a tenement, you wrote of soothing kisses, in Harlem or the Bronx, Fulton Street summers, dollars, beds, your fancy business, within seething Brooklyn, you work the five and ten, leave me here in splinters, you’re not coming home again, to that terrible wonder, of poor and lonely resisters, laying down their lovers, now you help the weathered, you my rootless sister, donning boots and leathers, snarling like a Bittern..

Rain

The place is deadly blue, her smile unknown, what the ancestors refused, hamstrung by swaying steps, she doesn’t hurt saying no, that dancing smile at rest, is looking for some news, takes your tales and shows, what you said you once knew, a passage to the blessed, young and free to bestow, light to the middle distance, catching a midnight choo choo, the engine steaming, she fills her boots, movement makes her selfless, she’ll warm her toes, in places without residence, where spirits gently flow

Quaker

She hears a strange whisper, the sound of a removal van, asks is it THE sisters !!!, each move the last trip, no one faults her tan, every move tunes her lips, she wears cool linen, the bars are full of men ocean town’s made up of them, they rise like ghost ships, she walks home in step, when sea green evening dips, but barefoot prays within, her dancing done, she'd rather have a someone, rather than the whistle, of another lonely camp, doesn’t care where she’s driven, who gives a damn ?

Priscilla

You'd gamble everything after, your friends say, including the Easter calendar, I wonder kissing your lips, watching cormorants in the bay, roll in tide like ships, ever think of me ha ha, salt and cologne not far away, preening my wings at the bar, do you miss those trips, smoking or kneeling to pray, going out as you came in, burning at lovers’ remarks, what an image they make, but soon drift away la la, you’ll give that page a skip, a search for time delayed, words are always thin, the beauty of your face.

Onisha

Smoking a cigarette, a lover's old face appears, fulsome not lonely yet, geese rise and sail, haunt the sky like deer, I knew her once in jail, blankets around us yet, she always cheered, wide as a fishing net, colours of the early rails, she’d let no-one near, someone who never failed, she absorbed uncertain dread, whatever brought us here, made it safe to tread, a woman who contained, flames passage into fear, shared jokes on trains, then disappeared.

Nika

The wind blows cool breath, across our defences, no one cares about caress, it fades in lighted cellars, what cast as we send, flowers to the mad jealous, bad ass drunks who jar us, encourage shy friends, like miners to a gold rush, across our coffin lands, nothing is sensitive, to their brutal stance, will anyone want us, dressed to offend, their moral advances, to carry by naked thread, our indebtedness. to the inventive West, who will assess us.