Rhina P. Espaillat
Two Nuns at the Mall
Black and white and black, they fall upstairs
to Better Dresses, where I spot them later
fingering cocktail silks. The short one wears
wire rims like a double yoke; the taller one
wears amber freckles whose color comes and goes.
They are still young: they laugh in unison
discreetly through Lingerie and up a flight
past Furs and Leathers, Domestics and Layettes
and out of sight, all white and black and white.
Rhina P. Espaillat, Playing at Stillness, Truman State
University Press, 2005.