This is a poem about myself also,
but not the same kind of poem.
I was listening to television one morning
and someone was talking and they were talking about witches,
and they said something about being born with 12 fingers.
Well, I was born with 12 fingers and I've always
regretted very much that they were cut off.
I think it would be really great to have 12 fingers when
everybody else just has 10.
My mother was born with 12 fingers
and so was my daughter, my oldest daughter.
Well, I promised myself that she would have her fingers,
but you know when you-- at that time anyway
when you had a child they drug you, right?
Yeah.
They put you under.
And when I woke up they had taken my daughter's fingers,
but they didn't really, this poem is about that.
I was born with 12 fingers like my mother and my daughter
All of us born wearing strange black gloves extra baby
fingers hanging over the sides of our cribs and dipping
into the milk
Somebody was afraid we would learn to cast spells
and our wonders were cut off
But they didn't understand the powerful memory of ghosts
Now, we take what we want but with invisible fingers
And we connect my dead mother, my live daughter, and me
through our terrible shadowy hands
[APPLAUSE]