Canticle

Slow steps quickened by radio hiss
Wanda
Wanda is singing and friendly on Fridays
Hums that swell past the bathroom threshold.

Wanda.
Wanda returns and returns again.
Once we both had carts,
hard protrusions in stacks of space -
I laughed/she didn't laugh.

Wanda was singing, was friendly
was a little blind, maybe
cross-eyed.

In the bathroom, ashamed
I hide from her,
from Wanda
Shed head after head of hair
sighing garlic in the echoes

Wanda sings in tongues, maybe
her body made of powder.