Colleen Abel
(after Brancusi)
Father shepherded us
as fathers do drunken
good-natured into life
Two daughters a blow
he bore well two chips
off the old block he said
He sang us the Mioritza
told us that the earth too
has a double sister world
full of people blameless
pure as mice while most of us
will annihilate in a great crack
of rent earth This is why
he made us so sturdy-ugly
bovine bulky
He said beauty
or survival you can
only pick one