Brenda Joyce Patterson \ Spring 2015

*

cease fire


(for Barbara Joyce)

it has been building
she knows
the low stool crouches

in the tub
cameras are rolling
she knows and refuses

to undress before me
refuses to disrobe
any more at a time

than the part to be washed
I show I am no threat
strip my body

bare flesh the same
brown as hers 
unarmed in the room

*

Brenda Joyce Patterson (brendajoycepatterson.com) is a poet and essayist. She was co-editor of the international literary magazine, Onionhead. Recent poetry and fiction have been published in Gravel Magazine and Melancholy Hyperbole. Her travel essay, "The Kindness of Strangers", was published in Go Girl: The Black Woman's Guide to Travel and Adventure (Eighth Mountain Press, 1997). She studied poetry under Peter Meinke, Lola Haskins and Nicholas Samaras.