at the bottom of the atlantic, there will be a war
on the terror
may a thousand nails chase you in your sleep,
claw at your flesh like unicorn horns
angels will tear their wings from their backs
and beat the shit out of you
with them, feathers splattered wet like abstract art.
for they will fall in your vanity, wishing to be human
just so they can show you how it is done.
may a million battered women march out of their graves
and dig their rest in your trembling soul
and she wishes, she wishes she could say all of these things
but us women are said to have carried our hearts
on our sleeves, always washing laundry
in case it bleeds thru the seams
she lives in an apartment made of bricks
with a bathroom that sings of a fleeting heart,
her kitchen faucet has a sore throat,
ends up in conversations with the skin of her eardrums
at night, she loves in silence
dreams of a voice for making love
on white linen, stained with well-worn human.
in Octobers, she imagines windows
like the ones along her new lover’s spine
logan square
for roger
there was never a right moment to speak
or laugh. when they pried my legs apart
fresh outta my mother’s womb,
they should’ve told me, go back
girl, go back in and hide
take cover, they should’ve
warned me about the war.
instead of borrowing books
from the walls of my mother’s
regrets, i could’ve been preparing
in her uterus, could’ve been studying
the proper way to load a rifle,
i would’ve known the heart at
greater length, could’ve learned
well ahead of time how to operate
heavy machinery.
sometimes when i sit in a room
full of black women
i am counting the ride-or-die bitches
i am ducking down behind
my spirit, praying they won’t vote me
the martyr.
i am convincing myself
we aren’t bitter
fighting the word so desperately
i laugh with the womanizer,
i play cards with the cheater,
i dance with the dead beat,
all the while flirting with anger.
i never liked anger,
it was always my least favorite of
emotions but damn, how that bitch thrills.
when i hear a strange mahogany voice
i wrap my ears around the words
the sound of such an instrument is
haunting heaven, some songs
i will never sing simply
because i am expected to do so
some men i will never love
simply because i love them.
when i rose into a conversation of your artillery,
when i marched along the battlefield,
noting the bodies lying around us
i was praying that the casualties
would understand, that somehow they pitied you
even then, rather you’d live and wrestle a lifetime
of demons, then beheaded and forgotten
i rather you remembered,
each day is a memorial
for some woman
waiting at a dining-room table
in Chicago, on a damp april night
sharpening the rotating blades
in her mouth, waiting
with an automatic in her lap
a finger stuttering on the trigger
it doesn’t heal me to see you hurt
doesn’t make the wounds
go away, if i can encourage you
to put down your weapons, maybe
we can both make it out alive.
lately, i’ve been playing russian roulette
with whiskey shots
clenching my eyes at bitterness
when he walked into the room
last night, i felt like a victim
for the first ten minutes
a chill came through me,
men are walking coffins
of secrets, they make love on grave sites
i say this to say, your past never goes away
ten years from now
you may be caught pushing
your daughter in a cart down the grocery aisle
and there are still those women
women whose bodies tense and quake
when they see you,
whose blood boils with flashbacks
of your fingers around their throat,
your thrust breaking them open
memories on aisle 4
perhaps you are a better man now
but you still hold her tight in nightmares
sometimes it’s too late
the memory is stale
is poison and gangrene
sometimes it must be cut off
in order
to live.
is that all you got
you are obligated to continue creating, says God
there are some things that will bring even the strongest woman down
for colored girls it is the moment you hear the spirit break
breaking
tugging
dragging
skidding
shrinking
whistling along
the spirit gets up off the floor of your belly
yells, what the fuck you broken for
you is blessed all up and down girl
you are powerful in your wounding
screams, is that all you got
still bleeding and bone shed
ankle jolting and tone dead
shackle and tree branch strong
the spirit knows, she says, is that all you got
i’m sorry you don’t know beautiful when it’s staring at you
it is this moment wide-eyed, shedding hurricanes
floodlike
floating bodies
like purple open-arm skies
like all i wanted to do was love you
like to be loved
like is that all you got?
what the fuck is you broken for?
like worlds stretching their legs in your eyelids
like i would’ve gave up my dreams for you
like if only you would’ve asked me
the spirit remembers her grandmother’s name is Grace
and her father’s name is Angel
she will never forget where she came from
from junkie and jail cell
hopscotch and block party summers
she is left for dead children
a testimony to roses
in concrete, a seed head dandelion born in Brooklyn
she is made of miracle and magic
wears struggle like a miniskirt she rolled up
when her mother wasn’t lookin
rocks the flyest kicks
with the latest cell phone
and a smile
a smile
she smiles
knows smiling
has perfected the art of smiling through pain
and around the corner she found her father
found her father on the corner
with shabby knees and a beggar’s face
she is tired of forgiving
of becoming her mother
of having a child she never wanted
with a man who didn’t know how to love her
she is tired
she is tired
she is tired
she is tired of trying to be everything
for everyone and nothi
ng for herself
she is not alone
and ain’t nothing nobody’s fault but her own
is not deserving of love
or tenderness, a hug
to be held, to be vulnerable.
until broken
until understood
until battle scar
until well behaved
until perfect and invincible
until aunt jemima on a stripper pole
she is your wet dream
she is wifey material
until she is made real
is holy ghost tongue possessed
called crazy, gone mad
gone lisa left eye
gone whitney houston
gone billie holiday
gone my mother
she is your soulmate because she knows how to love
like we survived slave ships
like thrown overboard babies
and backs whipped
she loves
the real way
like i am trying to learn
like teach me
like let me teach you
like i got you
like you my nigga
like i got you
like only i can style on you
like back in the day
like don’t ever diss this woman
don’t you know she is the backbone of a family
is not just a breeder
or hand-me-down
or a night stand
she is relentless, has never given up
until this day has still not given up.
drenched in the smell of her own breast milk
asks, do you understand
do you understand me
don’t talk to me of love if you don’t know broken
don’t know what it means to break
to still love
to break
to still love
enuff to take her up in your arms
when she’s stank and broken
to swallow that ego the white man done gave you
ego never looked good on a black man
he was never well suited for treating his woman this way
musta been something he learned
picked up in school
his mama did not teach him that
caution
this is not a metaphor
did you know she bleeds
she bleeds monthly
did you see the god in that
her beauty is not an excuse for some
flattery word poem
do not romanticize
do not write her another love poem
love her into romance
she is not your childhood
she is now
she is right now
spirit is heartbeat and blink
she’s a poem at the brink of breaking in your eyes
she is not a martyr for your cause
you musta forgot you were a king
musta forgot you were a king
in her queendom
her cause is ours
not yours is ours
is that all you got,
what the fuck is you broken for?
let’s don’t
how about we not
no more is we grudges
don’t special each other
like we used to, is this what comes of
so comfy with what is
we forget what was?
ain’t you anticapitalist?
is we lovin or nah?
the emerging woman after aborting a girl
8 a.m. in September
my daughter chose to show up
at my doorstep
unannounced
had the nerve to come talk to me
about being a mother
when i wasn’t ready
for no giving up my life
to mother no ungrateful child
wasn’t in no place to open no doors,
to let her see my empty cupboard,
to open my empty fridge, i ain’t got
time to explain to no child why
i write poems to relic the ruckus,
why i collect Sallie Mae letters in bags and post
collages on walls or why i can’t love the way nobody taught me
how or why my flaws show up in her face
or how my dimples fall deep in her cheekbone
ain’t got the heart to reason with her
my selfish choices or all the ways
i couldn’t be of sacrifice,
i couldn’t be nobody’s Christ,
i ain’t got enough hours in the day
to be somebody’s God and i look at her face, i couldn’t
bring myself to open the door, i couldn’t stand
to see her through the peephole, all my life
flashed before my eyes
and one day she’ll be a womanor not
have some children of her ownor not
she’ll understandor not
not till she does will she know the depth, how we raise our heartaches
and love the world whole,
healing through, snatching at glimpses of ourselves
while we offer pieces of flesh to this earth,
nah there ain’t
no mother here
you best be
on your way.
a small luxury
omega institute wellness center
i don’t usually do these things.
i cannot tell the difference
between
pain and pleasure. she places pressure
along my back, does it hurt here? what about
here? lifting my head, i have high tolerance
for pain, i say.
she sighs, a disappointed sigh—
we can still acknowledge
its magnitude. later, she asks how
i liked the massage: what a relief, i say.
what a relief
dream deferred
i wear a wreath of miscarriages,
the right and wrong of it. heavily
drugged, i bled and bled watching
droplets of me swirl down the drain
my breasts were voltaic to touch
shouting words at doorknobs, i cry
my worst cry. ugly, my mouth is
frightened. my partner cannot face me
he is on call. everywhere we go
in public. my joy is short-lived.
i mutter confessions to strangers,
i’m fine, i promise. i’m fine.
each poem i take my pedestals and bury them
scuttling in an empty bottle
a feast of foot-pressed grapes devoured
aching in the bend of a smirk
a hood rat shaking a hangover from a brow
my voice shivers words
settles in like a bunch of birds by a fountain
in what washes
water of the spirits
she is familiar in ways
honestly i am many strange selves
stories in palms, fistful of poems never read
pouring of a world away from worlds
i am every grand entrance and final departure
daylight hidden in the evening of me
confused for stars my eyes see
of rants and reasons
sprung of savvy sadness
quick on feet and aware
with all my being i hurl sounds at moving men
chin tilted toward partial truths
i unicycle up crowded sidewalks
and study traffic with a monocle on my third eye
i break from balancing
oceans and clouds, connecting
roads of homes and people
burning this season of blowtorch in my country
suddenly i feel not so alone
worry for nothing
spect
ators study how we hurt
all you have to do in life is live a little
knowing is no good without understanding
a woman walking
alone as a dragonfly
sauntering at sunset, a liar and an honest woman
sparing you fear and belief in another
speaking of disaster, she is, i am
remnants of you
we suffer each other
in a summer crawl from innocence, a rusted gospel
singing in a sloppy cry, i am my papa’s waltz
poem is a form i leave
for bookshelves and end tables collecting dust
one day i’ll look back and laugh
i am a lady in contemplation
knee-deep in thought, floating in
mulled upon confusion
i appear so selfish
i am borderline myself
i breathe deeply
you make holy war
you
who are
beautiful
are
always thinking.
there is no image
like the image
of a man who thinks.
the inside of my right thigh
will be where he writes
his autobiography.
he is obsessed with leaving
love notes on my skin
and I will wake up
some mornings i walk past
the bathroom mirror
finding things like “remember me”
drawn backwards
across my collarbone.
this is to the man who throws
a penny in the water fountain
and it throws it back
the metaphor of your life.
it rained
the day before you came
the sky fell
knocked over
dripping red from God’s veins.
it smelled of all the wet things in New York City.
when i got home, soaking and heavy,
it was silent—the clock clapped
its hands. i was hoping you’d bring me flowers
from the last grave you buried your mind in.
i was hoping you’d at least remember to
kiss me first.
you simply smiled and shook your head
so that your hair, silly and waving,
rambled over your forehead
like surrendering flags.
you make my blood self-conscious.
i can’t look at you
without a little girl
drowning in me,
without a self-righteous
woman running naked
down my spine,
a dove flapping its wings
against the walls
of my stomach
i can’t look at you without tripping
over my eyelids. you hold a world
in those eyes of yours.
when God made you,