Or to speak in song, her name off the tongue like a haloed word,
an irreplaceable metaphor driving me through green lights.
Queen B, drenched in honey with love on top, who taught me to sting,
made me feel H-town vicious though I was a naive Pennsylvania girl
with no rhythm / no curve, but damn it if I couldn’t still build a nation.
Who, because of her, every day as a woman felt like B’Day,
with her shimmying into my broken-hearted girl brain
until I bought a silver freakum dress with the money I saved
working at the restaurant, not for anyone else but me,
to feel the hug of hips, flaws and all, to stand up
in those six inch heels for whatever I believed in.
That echoed voice that reverberated into my backbone,
OK LADIES NOW LET’S GET IN FORMATION
who stayed with me from crazy in love
to drunk in love, to just me, myself & I.

Kara Knickerbocker is the author of The Shedding Before the Swell (2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (2017). She currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she works at Carnegie Mellon University, writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University, and co-curates the MadFridays Reading Series. Find her online at http://www.karaknickerbocker.com.