khartoum in the eighties,
my mother with ribbons in her hair
dress fanning about her nutmeg calves

my father
(who i hear
was so lively and handsome
that only bad magic could have emptied that
and filled him with smoke)

the borrowed record player
the generation that would leave
to make nostalgia of these very nights
to hyphenate their children
and grow gnarled by diaspora’s
every winter

but tonight, motown crackling
into the hot twilight,
mosquitoes swaying
in the velvet dusk,
my parents dance
without ever touching.