he loves a stripey woman:

criss-cross pinkness  

ridged in parts,

running riptide on the skin of

a sinner full of scars

 

she loves a man of god who

kisses ribbons telling tales,

in faded brutal pale, of

a history containing all the

counting of the blessings by the strip

 

he traces the beginning mark:

a scar that’s warm and wet but

yet that no one else can see just

where a child born back to front

eased her way into the world

 

tigerella shows her book of life                         

where pages turn like leaves of gold

and winning, always winning

in a history of warfare and

hostility and birth

 

kitchen knife and cannula

razoring a labour

gave a tigerella warrior                                   

a skin of storied scars

and he kisses every one