for Barack Obama
You cannot marry a giraffe, his mother was told, think
of the children---what kind of son---
his mother was staring at clouds, seeing tufts of milkweed in the
mouths of white-winged doves, seeing rainbow seeds
conceiving a new breed of son who stood
above, head and shoulders,
and she watched his cottony lips
munching, munching mimosa leaves
of every flavor---
sweet and sour, au vin rouge, drenched with ketchup
sometimes bitter as an empty stomach---
and then she heard
him negotiate with gangly grace the underbrush, the strangling vines,
to flex his telescopic neck
and scan the sky for a far savanna where
rainbow seeds could sprout, he
leading others there.
Nancy Kenney Connolly lives in Austin TX, though she will soon move to the Chapel Hill area of NC. Her poetry has been published in such journals as Asheville Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Concho River Review, The Lyric, Sycamore Review, and many others. She has three books, most recently Second Wind, and a chapbook, I Take This World, winner of the Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest.