Originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2001 issue of Sahara: A Journal of New England Poetry

for colored girls who have considered
suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf
-- Ntozake Shange

I had a dream about Ntozake Shange.
I forget
if the Woman in Red was there.

I had a dream about Ntozake Shange.
When I went to the matinee
teenagers bussed in from the suburbs
laughed in all the wrong places.
You know that part
where the father is holding his babies out the window?
They even laughed then.

@ 2001, Carol Foster
c.foster@umassp.edu