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a book bag; universally colored, tucked inside an orange jumpsuit, arranged as a jacket to metal doors, and bed bugs chained to delinquents. The souls and minds of hungry men, guilty or innocent, are built together with frantic eyes, caught on the edge of paper thin cots,
kill beat kill. This is the day lonely eyes are seized, ensnared on an island in a room intangible but authentic with blueblack feelings and disarmed manhood on suicide watch. I take the #42 bus to BCC and wonder if we have ever smoothed the edges of our faces against books and noise. I know you, You are tongues of sanity, urban sidewalks littered with segregation and televisions that avoid speaking our truths. You are mangled atrocities, an unchecked mailbox, a registered voter, left in a facility of shame. And even now as I pray a request of breaths, I can’t hold you, I can’t capture your beginnings. a book bag; an orange jumpsuit, a language of injustice, a memory of valor. Be still now and sleep For Kalief first appeared in The Write Launch |
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Until the butter softens on the toast Until the doorbell rings and it’s a package that needs a signature Until we are books and our pages are dust Until the shower runs long enough to steam the mirror Until the cat lurches on the sofa; hungry, needy, human Until the curtains aren’t hiding our blemishes Until we are in repose but nothing’s happening Until our feet are warm Until we are bleeding truth Until the paint is peeling off the walls Until we begin to laugh again Until we are water, dancing into ice cubes Until we are poetry Until we know the stars will come Until the chaos has made us one Until we are invisible Until, We’re in the middle of the living room And the earth is now our flesh… Wait (for us) first appeared in Rascal |
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My Dear Frida,
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& the person behind the counter is a man
& he reminds me of my father & he is a gray haired, pretentious, bastard & he is talking slow and careful & somehow I have begun to romanticize our meeting & take him in my closet to dream his shirt off & he is mine & we fall apart between spring and summer & I begin again & then the man says: “6 dollars and 50 cents” & I look up & my father is gone & I recognize there’s something about loving a man who’s hurt you And first appeared in The Free Library of the Internet Void |
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Before you were my child
heaven draped you across my womb. Your anatomy was copied, from two imperfect beings and became a deep crease, bent in the middle of a full size mattress. You were curved like your grandmother’s back, as you rolled your sentiments into me, inhale by exhale, by inhale, and I exhaled a field of poems and expressive masterpieces into your laughter, your eyes, the birthmark on your bottom. You were a sky then. Coarse coils of curls and Caribbean roots, your movements jerked- like Sunday’s chicken. my “woody” my “bambino” you were always mine. Before you were my child, you belonged to your father, and his father’s philosophy of soundless performances. You sat in my womb, as an open door; your movement was your only speech. You were the breeze that snuck in between the strands of my hair, the thin threads of gray on your daddy’s chest, a mirage of olive trees I have always wanted to plant. You were the tears rolling off the face of your ancestors, and a meadow of cactuses, shaped like a guitar, And when you untied yourself from the cord that held us together, you traveled across an overextended passage, above a beating heart, smooth and sweet, becoming a cloud wrapped in a velvety blanket, pulling on my breast commanding daybreak to begin… Before You Were My Child (for Micah) first appeared in Mothers Always Write |
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“When a gust of wind summoned by prayer catches a loose door and blows it back, smacking it against a house’s cracked siding. A young boy only hears: Get out. There is something coming that you cannot survive.” —Hanif Abduraraqib In a subtle disquiet I creep into your room I hear your breaths outlining the moon I whisper I Love You through the thick of my lips & wait to see your chest rise and fall; a fortified kingdom... These walls know how much I’ve cried for you How afraid I’ve become after Trayvon, Michael and Tamir How anxious it makes me to see you off to school unarmed and oblivious to the perils But your impatience for me has grown it lingers beyond my understanding You no longer look me in the eyes your breaths only expand the distance between us You are no longer the boy building trains out of cardboard or blowing dish detergent bubbles Where have you gone? You are not the boy singing songs off-key building capes out of towels I search everywhere gone I know this doesn’t mean much now: the prayers the grill cheese sandwiches the movie dates the words of warning the Saturday morning lessons the weekday chores but I wish for you that when the seasons change you will be equipped that you will conquer and not just endure that you will forfeit fear that your authority will be unconfined and resurrected in your darkest hours I pray your America won’t be whitewashed in self-hatred and your dreams more than clichéd metaphors I also pray I haven’t disappointed you My boy each time I watch you sleep it is a beautiful twinkling of peace The house rattles in ecstatic symphonies your snoring rest before the world begins baring her teeth before your blackness becomes a threat before the stars stop coming rest because something is always coming but you will survive sleep my beautiful black boy for it brings such joy to your mother Watching You Sleep (for Zaire) first appeared in 433 |
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With this stone, I am no melancholy woman: not relentless
in consideration of death in the dark gray morning or groaning at the sunlight slipping between the rock. Instead, I become a voice emerging from the borders of winter; a victor in the parting of the red sea a root thrived in the smallest part of earth whispering: here I am here I am here I am free Liberation (for Georgia O'Keefe's The Black Place) first appeared in the poetry chapbook, Cry Sweat Bleed Write, (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020) |
