Spades is a way of life for black folks.

My mother went into labor

In the middle of a game.

I was born as

Five and a possible. She said

She’d felt no greater pain than that loss,

Than when she turned away, shamefaced

In the midst of kin,

When certain bragging rights began to crown.

They pulled my body from her diamond,

Held me up to meet her gaze, to study

The odds of what a luckless god had

Given. An overbid could get you shot

At Grandma’s house, could have you

Question the number of hearts

You had in your hand.

Everyone knew that my mother was the score-

Keeper. She counted the books twice every

Round. There had been three before me.

Babies my mother got but did not get.

My mother taught me to watch a man’s eyes

When he deals, to cut the deck

Like his cord of wishful

Thinking.

She’d warn in silence, don’t talk across the table!

Then demonstrate over dinner with my father,

As the air held the weight of

Things unsaid.

After the divorce and Grandma’s funeral,

All the words in my mother for tired

Were tired, her hands folded in scorn

Like cards.