In this photo, he is laughing.

There is no cotton gin tied around his waist.

He’s not stretched into swollen limbs.

His eyes are still hazel and recognizable.

Two neat white rows of perfect teeth sit

totem-like in his mouth, and the world

did not know him because he had not

been murdered yet.

He’s still slipping into the kitchen

to get another piece of cornbread

while his mama ain’t lookin’.

He will mash it with his fingers, drink

some buttermilk and smile with those eyes.

They are still hazel and bright, like stars

in uppercase, and ain’t nobody

gouged ‘em out or shut ‘em closed

and when he goes to school,

he’ll do a silly little dance with his arms

and legs cocked out at odd angles,

and his classmates will laugh and there will be

no cotton gin tied around his waist.

In the next photo, he’s proud of the hat on his head.

You can see that by how straight his neck is.

His Mama is in the picture, and they got the same face

and his head is high and perfect and ain’t no bullet in it

and it will be months before there is one,

and in those months he’s still his mother’s child…

The smug and overfed manchild all Southern ladies

love to cook for, ‘cuz he licks the plate clean even

if there’s leftovers, he just eats and Yes, ma’ams

and makes you giggle so much you gotta shoo him out

the kitchen so you can get the pots clean and he’s

breathing     and     whole     and

ain’t no men dressed like midnight with sunless, un-laughing eyes

snatching him out the door, changing everything when neither

he nor his mother asked to be anything other than

laughing in the kitchen with the greens still simmering in the pot.

The last photo of Emmett Till is a holocaust.

The picture that history concretized into the nighttime musings

of black children who hop-scotched above and below Bible Belt,

who saw a tattered, otherworldly version of the fourteen year old

Till, head poised strangely above a sharp black suit on the cover

of Jet magazine.

There were no eyes smiling.

Mischievous manchild wonderful, straight-necked

full-of-tomorrows-boy staring back into the camera.

What was there was not there at all.

What was there swallowed the world.

My mama was eight years old when they painted

Till’s image on the cover of a negro magazine.

Eight years old.

Pigtails, pinafores, pleats, and a heap of pretty girl possibilities.

And I know my grandmother set that book down with intention

on the coffee table, knowing her baby girl would see it

and then know what should not be known but what must be known.

This is what they did with an adolescent mistake.

When a fast-talking, finger-snapping negro from up North

brags about big city white girl honeys with rosy lips and no Jim Crow,

It is an image I shoved at my fourteen year old son,

frenetic in my attempt to tell him that this is black history.

I need him to know

if he’s not careful, not brave,

not the sum total of all our unlit courage,

if he relegates these stories to Cliff’s Notes,

he bleeds out and dies in the epilogue.

I need you to know Salih, that my arms will never

be wide enough to cover sins like these,

that your head, held so high, is still a cautionary tale.

But go on and do it anyway, son. And laugh,

and dance with your arms and legs cocked out

at odd angles and slip by me and get the extra cornbread

whenever you can, and be grateful that when you

and your friends say something slick about the pretty blonde

girl in the front row of algebra, you are permitted that levity

after four hundred years of midnights,

necks decorated in nooses, plantations

that dressed up terrorism in white

lace gloves and mint julep.

I tell my son to remember Emmett Till

when his head was still high, his eyes still hazel.

Remember how high he held his head to celebrate that new hat.

I tell my son that I will be his mother all the days of my life.

That I will celebrate his brown boy buoyancy.

And while I do not know what tomorrow holds,

I know he will never be strange fruit,

Will never be broken open,

Will never be strung up,

Will never be hog-tied,

Will never have his face, so like my own,

Crushed, mangled.

I tell my son,

I am growing these limbs for you, Salih.

To get around you, and surround you.

and we will be strong…

and unapologetically black

for as long as we can be.

You sit

in my father’s wrinkles

and my mother’s unsure smile.

You are prying their bodies apart

with your late night phone calls.

I have never known your voice,

but I can still hear you

calling me a firecracker

She’s just like her mother,

you say.

I cannot tell you how many times

I’ve laid awake at night rehearsing

what I would do if I ever saw you

on the street. I have rattled this

scenario on replay over and over,

pushed myself to the edge

at the thought of your touch,

stared at the bones in my knuckles

for countless hours, wondering

how much damage

I am capable of causing.

If I ever saw you on the street

I would probably forget everything

I was supposed to say at that moment.

And you would not know who I am.

But if you looked closely,

you would see my mother’s gapped teeth.

You would see her skinny legs and oval face,

you would see her in my crooked fingers.

If you looked closely,

you would know I am the daughter

of the woman you tried to steal.

I have watched you in the emails you sent her,

stared at the return address of the gifts you mailed.

Looked up bus prices to see how much it would cost

to show up on your doorstep and tell you

everything my father wishes he could say.

I knew your name

before you even knew your lover’s child.

I knew it was you in the lace,

in the black,

in the silhouette dress.

I know what you like in a woman

and that woman is not your wife.

I know why you loved my mother.

I have watched my dad love the same things

on the hammock in the backyard.

He holds her face like a ripe plum,

and smiles into her.

When he looks at her, he sees youth.

The woman who showed him the mountains,

who made him believe in loving someone

with every ounce of your own being.

The woman who gave him a family.

When he looks at my mother, he sees me.

But Calvin,

what did you see?

Did you see the awkward car ride home

after we picked up your scent at the airport?

Or the rock that sat in Daddy’s throat

when he smelled you?

Did you see that?

Or did you just take the woman

who was too fragile to carry

her own backbone and smother her

in your heavy compliments?

She still walks with broken knees

and touches my father as though he

will crumble at any moment.

Our home has become a pile of sticks

in an empty plain where the slightest

reference of your relations will

send us into a fucking windstorm

I never speak of the town where you first met her.

I don’t complain about the boy who cheated on me,

or the politicians who are screwing the housemaid.

I give bad reviews to movies with infidelity

in their plot lines and swallow my gushing

of beautiful love stories hoping they

will never be reminded of you.

You are the blister on my family’s tongue,

so when you decide to make another appearance

in this crooked frame, this autopsy of a household

on this eggshell bridge of a doorstep,

don’t go looking for my mother.

Come looking

for Me.

When I was four, I taught myself how to eat

the entire world. It took me until six to find out

what flavor the Mississippi Delta wind was.

And much like any place in the South, the aroma

was intoxicating with dead bodies and Bibles.

My father—a man with branches for arms,

poetry as magnolia flowers, and roots forming

his insecurities—taught me early that leaving home

wasn’t as hard as biting his own bark.

He wrote poetry. Simple and humble.

And every Valentine’s day I would receive his Love

shiny enough to reflect my scars.

With age, the poetry became alive.

With age, he became closer to death.

and eventually it became too hard to digest.

My scars were displaced

in soil. Love bled in and out

of our lesions. We all learned

to use knives to cut away pain

And when daddy’s poetry became

nothing more than a drunk stagger,

I mutilated the memory on my body.

At 13 I stopped writing. Never for lack

of inspiration. Maybe a lack of desire

to convert another storybook into a riddle.

I watched in silence. I watched his body

eat its own existence. Always using scars

passed down from generations

of dystrophy and disease.

Some say that some old lady placed a root

on his grandfather that passed down generations

and plagued every child with illness and creativity.

It didn’t take long for me to notice

how quiet the world became

to someone who wasn’t finely broken like the soil.

By 18, I lost my virginity on the fourth of July

to man who never heard a woman scream.

I blame that on my legs.

Whatever voice I had was a stitched wound

over his ego. Between his fireworks

and my daddy’s wheelchair,

I can’t recall which one

protested God’s physics.

I didn’t want to remember he existed.

He, barely breathing and muffled in voice,

tried desperately to force the sounds

from his throat into a poem.

But all I could ever hear was the sound

of his inferior genetic makeup.

These scars aren’t a testimony

of rebellion, but rather what’s left of years

of closed eyes and misunderstood looks.

My scars lay on his deathbed.

Before I could kiss his forehead

I couldn’t help but think

that if my scars reflected his,

would I too have Lonely drifting from my eyes?

Would I be sensitive to the heat of the Sun?

Would my voice be strong enough to whisper

I love you in my daughter’s ear,

or would I be forced to eat myself whole

until I was vegetated and still hungry?

I prayed death to him.

My soul could no longer hold

his deterioration of body,

though his mind was intact.

I missed his poetry.

Those words.

I missed his height…

And his weight…

And his voice.

Tell me that you see my scars

and the pieces leftover from them.

I’ll write my poetry,

type it loudly on keyboards

Hoping to recreate any sound like

I once heard from my father’s woodwork.

Sometimes with my eyes closed, hoping

I would see him on Valentine’s day,

when love knew no funny gestures

or awkward shifts in conversation…

When the world didn’t look so much like one needle,

and a million bleeding wounds. When I was flawless.

And I guess that was when you were, too.

For now, we all should feel lucky.

Our bodies can still hold all the pieces

left over from planets crashing into space.

Lucky we have legs

and eyes and a voice.

If you want to know how I got my scars,

open them all and ask me.

So, this is an invitation to a sewing circle.

Can you imagine the sound of 1 billion pairs of hands sewing?

Our needles: as ancient & as common as vertebra.

Our stories: decaying family heirlooms hung in dusty hallways.

To be a woman is to be a wedding quilt on a child’s bed.

I am the warmth the you sleep beneath

without ever having to understand the labor inherent in its creation.

Sometimes I want to sew the world into its sheets.

I want to beat it with a bat until the warning sticks

like blood to linen. My sisters & me, bats & bricks

& beams in hand—can you imagine: every rape choking

on its own teeth. Every catcall and roofie a detached retina.

Every red light district a collapsed lung.

Would they still rape us if they knew our cunts

were made of sewing needles?

Would they still rape us if they knew our skin

is a spool of thread dipped in broken glass?

I want to sew the world into its sheets

I want to sew Steubenville into its sheets

I want to sew Juarez into its sheets

I want to sew my own self-hatred into its sheets.

This is an invitation

& this is a warning.

We are starting a sewing circle.

“Polyrhythm” describes the simultaneous sounding

of two or more independent rhythms.

2:3 polyrhythm combines a rhythm of 2 beats

with a faster rhythm of 3 beats, which cycle in

and out of sync for the duration of the piece.

You tried to teach me beats

in a parking lot

after we tried to fuck

in the back of a truck

in a parking lot

after I told you it might be

my first try and you told me

that you wanted it to be special

then I told you I just wanted it to be over

and you tried to teach me beats after we succeeded

on the shores of Lake Mead

after you handed me beers and lube

like it was a dozen roses

it was a sweeter gift

than a dozen roses

you said you’d looked up

“how to fuck a virgin the nicest way”

that your friend told you

“if you’re gonna be somebody’s first

you’ve gotta be good to them

cause then they’ll never get over you”

and somehow that was kind of sweet too

and then you tried to teach me beats

like 2 on the left hand

and on the right hand 3

but I could never quite syncopate

the two sides of me

enough to keep steady

so I just watched you drummin

on the shores of a lake man made

and a dam made to impress aliens

we both knew I would leave

and I don’t know what I said

when you told me that you loved me

but I don’t think it kept very good time

five years after my leaving

one after you ripped yourself

from the skin of the world

I lay back on an overpass in Poughkeepsie

and basked in the fact that sound

waves never really disappear

they just get wider

wondered why there were suddenly

two beats in my hands separately now

as if you’d somehow

ripped them apart

when you left holding one

holding 2 on one

and 3 on the other like

3 months after your passing

I forgot what to name the street

couldn’t hold them

as anything other than the ground

that had lost hope of ever knowing

the soles of your feet

I sat beneath them

in a million broken light

laying down beats for fireflies

losing time

to make sure they were still fireflies

and not simply the lit cigarettes of ghosts

I told myself I was crazy

3 times for every 2

I wished you would hear me

told myself there was nothing

3 times for every 2

I hoped you were near me

told myself to be honest

to see what’s real

then forgot to know how

in the months after you gave up

on this life I drowned

in the streets I had forgotten not to call rivers

I told myself I was crazy

3 times

I told myself I was crazy

3 times

I told myself I was crazy

3 times when I told you I love you

3 times for every 2 that I’d missed

3 times for every 2 that could have made a difference

everybody’s got a first time everybody’s got a first love

and someday everybody learns that growing up

is a heartbeat fading

before you tap out the rhythm of its name

if you could hear me now.

So there’s this new dance. Its called the crackhead shuffle

A not so subtle, not so simple dance with one step: Move,

move to the best block, move to yo’ next rock. Rock and

nod a bob, but can’t stop, won’t stop, like the Roc

but the only thing that rocks this fella is a hella fire

internal beat, that won’t let his hella tired feet cease from

singeing sorry streets soured with smoke and shame

lames who let the game play them. Those who probably

let the 80’s pay them. And now they’re paying for it

Mama said, “Everybody’s got a dancer in the family right?”

One that can two step around twelve. Who tap dances in shoes

he only intends to sell, but he digs blues. And jazz,

and rap, and rock. Yeah, nothin’s like rocks.

That shit will knock your socks off. Like great sex.

Like cheap latex. It can bust and break and birth

new generations stuck singing the same song. On the same

station. Searching for a rhythm that resembles that first fist fight

with your father. That first time you ignored brother and stole

from mother. That first fix was was supposed to fix all that.

Did it? Did it?

Now you’re stuck shuffling your two left feet

searching for a dream of a life thats just in your reach

like toothbrushes and toothpaste. Trying to scrape the sickening

taste of regret from the roof of your mouth. But you don’t remember

much about roofs or rules ’cause since Mom’s kicked you out.

Since my moms kicked you out, you been out here dancing,

just getting by, and shit, family, all I don’t get is why.

Why jig to a tune that makes your mama cry? A do si do

for this dough, for this bread. But you don’t eat

just keep bobbing your head. Held up way too high

on your skinny unstable shoulders sits a boulder born of a rock

that you love to listen to. A habit too huge to fit on any compact disc.

But this ain’t a diss, just a soundtrack to a story I’ve heard

one too many times. A song from which we know

one too many lines. And none of ’em rhyme.

None of ’em make sense. Like the dollars and dreams

I know you have wasted. And it’s sad.

So fucking sad. And it always had me wondering,

where do crackheads learn to dance like that?

The first time I took a life,

my hands were earthquakes

of guilt, of doubt, of fear.

I held the knife to his throat.

Wonder what he saw

reflected in the blade.

I cut into his neck

as his eyes met mine.

He didn’t say a word

as the blood began to spurt.

He didn’t say a word, but I know

what he wanted to tell me. He said,

My name is Stanley

I have lived a good

and honorable life.

His name was Stanley.

He lived a good and honorable life.

Woke every morning long before the sun

to proclaim to everyone in a five mile radius,

Good morning!

My name is Stanley.

I am a rooster!

My name is Stanley.

I am a good and honorable rooster!

Good morning!

Unlike most roosters, who hatch

from their shells screaming,

Hey there motherfuckers!

I’m a motherfucking rooster!

Stanley spent the majority of his life

thinking he was a hen.

I can’t say I blame him.

He wanted to be one of the girls.

He wanted to fit in.

Until one day, something changed.

There were feathers where previously

there had not been feathers, like he

was suddenly reminded of his position

of privilege in the poultry patriarchy,

turned to the hens as if to say,

Goddamn!

I’m a rooster!

Did you know that I’m a rooster?

Goddamn!

My name is Stanley and I am a rooster!

And what a rooster he was.

He took on his new job with such pride,

gathering grass and grain to distribute

amongst the hens in their nest boxes,

quelling domestic disputes

taking up a daily guard post

of constant vigilance to protect the flock.

He tried to protect the flock

the day the neighbor’s dogs attacked.

He was a whirling dervish of green

and crimson feathers, sounding the shrill alarm,

drawing attention to himself for as long as possible

to let others escape to safety.

The dogs were called off seconds before capturing Stanley.

For two days I carried him to and from the henhouse,

fed him by hand, cleaned his crusting wounds.

When it became clear Stanley

would not recover, it was up to me

to kill him. Me, the 16 year-old farm-sitter

in rain boots and a sweat stained t-shirt.

Me, pulling the slaughter knife from the cabinet

where it was kept out of reach of children

like me. Considered more than briefly testing

its strength against the softness of my own skin.

Wondered out loud if I might survive the slaughter.

I cut off his head,

buried his carcass

in a black plastic bag.

I killed him.

Stanley, the good

and honorable rooster.

I wonder,

Who will it be to hold that knife to my throat?

What will I see reflected in the blade?

Will it ever be more than relief?

One of these days,

I will stand before god.

What will I tell her

when she finally admits

I was meant to be a man

(but when she learned

I was born to climb mountains,

she knew the women needed me more)?

When I stand before her

with Stanley on my shoulder,

will he tell me I set him free

to follow his flock to heaven?

Is he now the rooster in the henhouse of god?

When I stand before her,

will I be a woman?

Will I be a man?

Will I finally belong?

Will I ever be able to tell her,

My name is Erin.

I have lived a good and honorable life

And I immediately wanted to show him

how to be camouflaged; how to give up

his shadow and become a closet;

that they have picket signs and slanderous

tongues shaped like swords of malice made

for cutting; that we all have a certain type

of prejudiced bully inside us…

You boy, must not believe in being out-casted.

And that blue, blue is more fitting

for the sinking emotions you might feel,

or to show the life span of your bruises

that haven’t quite healed yet, or the color

of your iris before a piece of you turned grey.

Tim, with all of his 206 bones,

17 of them reaching for me in his eyes,

looks at me the way he does hope

and the ability to love outside of himself,

is waiting for an answer.

...there will be a celebration.

They will speak of deliverance, say

God is good, as if She wasn’t the last time.

This time, there will be talk of babies

out of my vagina—as if babies couldn’t

come out of my vagina before.

My mother will pick up the phone,

call all of her friends—proud.

Make plans for a dinner party

I am not invited to.

This was never about me.

This time, they will rejoice.

Ask about marriage plans

before they memorize his last name,

but at least they will memorize his last name.

My friends, the straight ones,

will utter violent words, say

I’m glad you no longer think you are a man.

And with all the pain shooting from my toes,

I’ll want to yell out: No! I never thought

I was a man, but being with a man

doesn’t make me feel any more like a woman!

This time, my friends,

the not-so-straight ones,

will utter violent words

at dinner parties and rallies

which I am no longer invited to.

This was never about me,

and when they are forced

to look me in the eyes,

they will keep their words

tucked in a safe space,

smile, and say, It’s ok.

Sexuality is fluid.

They will strip me

from every poem, protest.

They will not ask me if he is a phase.

My straight friends will say:

Girl, I knew all that was a phase.

I will be an animal in the middle

of a caged ring while they all stare,

fixated on the phase that fits them best.

They will cheer me on—They will cheer me off.

Both sides will make me an example

of what not to do.

But my father.

Oh, my father.

This time,

like the last time

and all the times before,

he will pick up the phone,

proud. Ask, Are you happy?

Good. Now, how was your day?

I wish they could all be like my father.

I wish they would all wear their judgments

like love. Then maybe they would understand

why I always wanted to fit into my father’s pants.

There is something about love without much restriction,

something about love without many rules and regulations.

For I can recall wanting to punch a girl for trying to kiss me,

buried beneath secret tongue taps until my fist bloomed

with the first pussy in front of my eyes.

That moment, I plucked most of my fears away.

And I can recall a man telling me

that I just didn’t find the right one.

And I wanted to punch words into his face:

If only you knew what women put women through,

you would not sound so stupid!

And I can recall, not too long after,

when my fist hardened with the first

male erection between my thighs

in eight years. And as we released,

I still wanted to punch that man in the face.

But I released so many wasted moments,

infuriated towards those who have only

experienced love in limited forms,

who haven’t swallowed feminism.

We have all taken fear deep in

the back of our throats, knowing

very well it is what we all really taste like.

With all the experiences shooting from my chest,

I want to yell out: This transformation does not

define this womanhood! It defines the power

to adapt to any love that shelters!

Houses this heart!

Feels like home!

That only light can build,

but no stone can break

This time.

Oh, hi! Come in, I’m baking.

Saw those eggs you laid next to Apt 209,

up the nostril of that road-killed raccoon.

I’ve been watching you.

I have a last batch of babies myself.

Have a seat. Cookie?

Yes, this couch is silky soft—

busy incubating embryos!

I admire your green figure.

Those scarlet eyes shine so metallic,

I can almost see this old widow’s

red corset in them.

Your pretty wings have a rip!

Here, come sit a little closer.

My sewing kit has just the thread.

Whoops! Sewed them together!

Oh, quit jerking your buzzy bottom.

You’re messing up the spinning

casket pattern I got from Better Homes

and Garden Magazine.

Don’t be so surprised!

My kids need something extra to snack on.

You know I am a bloodless creature.

You, with your eight hearts to spare,

you know I’d do anything

for my children.

… and all the girls laugh like rattled chains.

And you are twelve and laughing at Jimmy,

hoping God will be sweet. Let you be the sweat

sticking to the shadow of his red hair.

Meagan whips each ribbon of blonde over her shoulder.

Susie’s disappear behind her ear.

The cornrows stitched to your scalp say girl,

you just ain’t that lucky. Suddenly,

your body is a cathedral of no, shouting at the joints.

This is the day you are found by your body.

This is the day its black stops hunting you.

You, the skeleton on the playground,

laughing at white boys without her skin on.

Jimmy wears khaki shorts. Every day.

Your brother made bloody jigsaw of a white boy’s jaw.

Jimmy eats peanut butter and jelly with the crust cut off.

You know all the words to “Cop Killer.”

Jimmy tells the one about the crow that flew into the country club.

Your grandmother’s whole body was swallowed

to a whisper named “mammy” that drowned in the spit of white babies.

But Jimmy is love licked all clean of 6^th grade silly.

You are still laughing. You pray for your name in his mouth.

Look, Jimmy. This blood looks just like yours, and so what

if it screams just a little bit louder. This brown is a small thorn,

but this love is all the mercy.

Jimmy tells the one about the crow that flew into the country club.

You are not the song he is singing. You are the shadow

poured into the white space. His eyes blue-eyed blade you;

whittle you down to frat boy small talk, Jaeger shots from now.

They are still laughing. Your body has tricked you into giving it weight.

Jimmy tells the one about the crow that flew into the country club.

No one touches it.

No one wants to wash their hands twice.

And Jimmy is funny.

Jimmy is so, so funny.

I still don’t know how to trust

like you. How to dare the truth.

Coax the palm open. Convince

the ocean loud. How we stood

naked, wide-eyed as the saltwater

swallowed our fear. Do you

remember the first cigarette

I will never finish smoking?

That morning you said you’d

create a religion if you could.

That we might all survive.

Amen. I’ve yet to trust invisible

so completely as you singing

“Stormy Weather.” I’ve never

drowned in a voice that way. Never

wanted air less. Never understood

more than watching the red disappear

from your lips. You walked over to me.

Unraveled the distance. My whole body

silenced by the downpour.

Listen. It rained today. The kind

that never stays long enough.

Dear anger,

Thank you for making me speak up.

Dear White Student Union,

I am sorry I have taken so much of your privilege

that you think you are struggling

to hear your story told in this nation.

I am sorry that you mistake diversity for genocide.

Dear White Males who believe

they are the victims of rape culture,

checking your privilege is not attacking you.

Please understand that calling rape culture “women’s paranoia”

doesn't erase the violence.

Dear men,

Calling me a bitch, slut, angry feminist,

does not help the way I perceive you.

For the record: I’m angry.

Dear smiles I get while wearing makeup,

You hurt worse than the stares.

Dear men and women and your stares,

I do not owe you my biology.

My mascara. My shaved armpits.

My breasts where you think they should be.

Dear body, I apologize for ever believing I did.

Dear body, I am sorry I have refused

your grace for so long.

Dear sky, what do we look like from here? Do we look pretty?

Dear moon, do you even know what pretty is

supposed to look like? We measure ourselves

against your beauty, not realizing you are a rock in the sky.

We think everything has a mirror to be afraid of.

Dear dirty looks I get while holding my boyfriend’s hand,

I know you know what pretty is supposed to look like.

Dear pretty, I don’t want you.

Dear world, I wrote this poem while naked.

This is me not apologizing.

Dear light skin, you make being Latina less dangerous.

You make me take responsibility for my history.

Dear accent that comes out when I’m angry,

Thank you. Just thank you.

Dear gay marriage protesters,

Do not say the word love around me.

Dear Straight White Male professors,

What do you mean when you say "we"?

Dear Professor Haeberlin,

Please stop rolling your eyes

while I discuss representation in your class.

Dear Professor Haeberlin,

If a person of color tells you

you are being insensitive,

you are being insensitive.

When did laughing at my name

become part of the curriculum?

Dear Professor Haeberlin,

My name is not yours to edit.

Dear assimilation, I am not yours to edit.

Dear men who only speak in compliments,

You are not needed.

Dear comments about my appearance

or lack thereof, nothing of mine is for you.

Dear women,

We are on the same team. I promise.

Dear Feminism, I am sorry I ever hesitated

to say your name.

Dear I HEART BOOBIES bracelets, please stop

sexualizing a fight with death and instead

congratulate a survivor.

Dear movies, I am not impressed with your ability

to reduce race and gender to jokes.

Dear jokes, I refuse to be your punchline.

Dear everyone, YOU CAME OUT OF A VAGINA.

Just a reminder.

Dear shame, the following are a list of words

I will no longer whisper:

Vagina

Tampon

Cramps

Ache

Pain

Pain

Pain.

Dear shame, I’ve had enough. Thank you.

My sister calls me.

There are balloons on the front porch.

She asks me: What you do when you’re afraid of your gut

feeling and there are balloons on the front porch?

When you can’t shake the ghosts that keep you up at night

When you search and find out a man got killed on

your block but they don’t say who. When you’re praying

the unanswered phone calls mean jail.

My sister calls me.

There are balloons on the front porch.

He was tortured in the basement. My sister now spends

most of her time wondering how long the hour felt to him.

If you asked him for anything he would have given it to you

or showed you how to get it, my sister says.

When someone is murdered the police can’t remove anything

off of the body. Couldn’t lock up the crime scene.

He had his house keys in his front pocket.

Later that day, a friend tells me that she worries

about her family dying in her home country.

I tell her: I can relate.

She tells me I can’t.

She says: If you’re in America, you are

automatically rich; automatically privileged.

I tell her: Not everyone in America gets to be an American.

When my sister calls, there are balloons on the front porch.

A made up story about an annual event, in which

two people from each of twelve starving districts

are randomly selected by the wealthy

to compete in a televised battle to the death.

Now, don’t get me wrong:

The Hunger Games is my shit.

But I can’t help but notice

how painting poverty in white face

makes it fantasy—makes it fiction.

Makes a #1 selling novel.

A hit at the box office.

Guess bein’ brown and hungry

ain’t all that entertainin’.

Our stomachs have been wailing

since parched tongues licked

cornmeal mush off of fingertips,

dry and cotton plant cracked.

Since chitlins fashioned pig intestine

into to a delicacy. Since Tenforadollar

Ramen, boiled hot dogs, and pinto beans.

This game is only one sport in the Olympics

we call surviving. This story is not foreign

to those of us who know about fighting

to the death while governing bodies watch you,

neatly placing obstacles in your path.

We call it “crack rock,” “welfare,”

“the prison pipeline.”

You call it “entertainment,”

but The Hunger Games is my shit.

Is hood shit.

Black people are dying by the mouthful

at the hands of a government who recruit

the famished, train them, then call them “athletes.”

Meanwhile, Hollywood spends millions of dollars

to tell this story without us.

They call it “Panem.”

We call it “East Oakland,”

where the only white people

in the school are the teachers,

and the students have children

before they have boyfriends.

Call it “South Central,”

where domestic violence runs wild,

and you’ll hear the voice of God

before you hear the ambulance

that was supposed to save you.

Call it “Detroit,”

where a black woman asking for help

is means to shoot her in the back of the head.

Call it “Florida,”

where letting the bass drop

will get a car full of black men shot

and the murderer will only do time

for the people who survived.

Killin niggas ain’t been this fun

since 13-year-old Black boys

stopped whistling,

since brown babies hung

from umbilical chords,

the blacker the berry

the tighter the noose.

We’ve learned that bein’ hungry

ain’t all that bad when it means

you’re still alive.

They say I’m off-white, high yellow,

bright-bright, do all the passing.

They say, my body a light,

say, “real” black and brown be shadows

cast aside—grounded: an offering

to the wildest dark.

And I, strutting ‘round god-given,

like I’m god given.

Like god done gave me all this sky.

They say,

Us light skin women be church

"real" black and brown bodies

be four little girls—Birmingham black.

When you’re "culturally ambiguous"

the world thinks you as middle ground,

as unscathed, as no one’s daughter.

you pretty for black

you not black enough

you better race

you yellow bone

you exotic

you wifey material

Every brown girl will canvass thy face.

Claim your skin baptized, scarless

and holy ridden, a battleground of men.

They will make a sanctum

of where you cross,

remind you that, no matter

how brown you think you are,

you can’t sit at their table.

Every white girl will canvass thy face,

claim your skin a rude stain.

Think you as “not really black,”

light enough to ask of the unknown,

of all the things wondered & feared

I think you’re black but you don’t

look like the rest of them

How do you get your hair in a bun?

Do you wish you were either black or white?

It’s like you’re permanently tan, isn’t?

They will remind you that,

no matter how light you think you are,

you can’t sit at their table.

You ain’t eating their food.

You: a footnote, a bastard child.

You: mastah done grown weary

and fucked the field negro, now

you a house negro, all uppity

and stainless, shucking and jive’n.

Clean, that’s what you are,

golden baby,

no black boy lynched

gutted, peeled alive,

spewing from your breath.

Ain’t no black girl raped, beaten,

fucked alive.

When they look at you,

they do not see blood.

You are what made it,

a bridge of sorts,

the marriage between

murderer and quest,

it makes you a casualty.

You are at war with yourself.

When they look at you,

they cannot see blood.

I think of my great great grandmother,

of her tired hands,

the way my hair is silly as hers.

What of your grandmother?

Of the hemp-knot round her nape?

Of her mutilated body?

When they look at you, they cannot see blood.

What a privilege,

to be a child of diaspora,

marginalized like the rest of ’em,

but too light to be thought to be

marginalized like the rest of ’em.

Go head, girl,

play that light skin violin.

Cry them light skin privilege tears.

Death ain’t coming for you.

Death ain’t coming for you.

The week my daughter’s lungs started to develop,

there should’ve been a giggle resonating

across my abdomen at the thought

that my baby could finally breathe on her own.

Instead, I found myself wondering

how loud she would be able to scream

if someone touched her

with hands like chloroform.

Would her voice holler like a fire engine?

Would her lungs hold enough air captive

to power her body to dash, charge her

vocal chords with enough electricity

that anyone standing in a 5 mile radius

would feel as though they had been

struck by lightning?

At the offering of familiar candy

and an unfamiliar car,

would this daughter of mine

go willingly?

Or would she be able to do

what her mother was unable to?

Decipher in an inhale who to trust,

smell the dissolving powder

at the bottom of a glass of alcohol.

Know when their scent changed.

Know how to escape,

how to hold her breath long enough

to tuck and roll around the shuddering

shoulders of the 610 loop.

Had I given her

extra gills on the inside

just in case someone tried

to drown her—tried to shove

her on a ship in the middle

of the Gulf? Could she respire

well enough to make it back home?

I had already felt her fins kicking,

and I am saddened to report

that I didn’t think they were

strong enough.

I don’t want her to discover

too quickly the dangers of being silent

the consequences of words caught

in her trachea with not enough courage to

push them out.

Had I shown her how to shove

a banshee into the black box

of her throat—a siren in every sinew—

that at a grabbing, an inappropriate caress,

she could keep herself from becoming an odyssey?

Would she be able to sustain her pitch

long enough to melt Odysseus’ beeswax?

When seduction tries to convince her to come hither,

will she know how to flip the switch, stretch her

larynx into a lyre? Would she never know when to give up,

Steer them into a rocky demise?

Had I shown her how to be persistent

when the tide rises?

How to load her windpipe like a shotgun

and buckshot when need be?

It’s my job to teach her

that living on the Texas coast

makes her an easier commodity

to traffic, so I pray she is learning

to land lock her voice, build

her esophagus into a bell tower,

know when to ring.

Know when to scream.

My job to tell her that just because

she is a woman, her No’s may sound

like a foreign language some people

may not be willing to translate.

But if she bellows, if she shapes

her duodenum into a gong,

swings her tongue out like a mallet

when they come for her,

she can clang some kind of

deafening shrill—a piercing alarm

tuned to her mother’s ear,

I promise: Baby Girl,

I will find you

Mommy will always

find you.

I grew up crooked,

dressed like my father.

Anyone who told me girls

couldn’t wear high-tops or button-ups?

I punched them.

In 2nd grade I took 1st place

in beating the shit

out of every boy

who said he was tougher

than me.

My mom thought more church

would help me “straighten” up,

but I’ve always been better at bending.

In 8th grade, I learned

about gender & sexuality.

My psychology teacher told us,

Lesbianism is a mental disorder

that derives from penis envy.

I assured her that wasn’t true,

since I had the biggest dick

in all of middle school.

In high school, I remember a boy

named Drew Henry.

He wore a purple coat.

I envied how brave he was to wear it.

How he stared down the throats

of so many people who attached his name

to faggot, and how I was too afraid to say

anything, because I didn’t want to be outed.

It’s a shame, how so many

kids are taught to hide

their hearts

condemn their skin

It’s 2014 and there are still people who believe

that being attracted to the same sex

is some sort of disease

The fact that homosexuality exists

in 1500 species and homophobia

exists in 1 is proof that love is something

human beings need more of.

It’s absurd that we live

in one of the most advanced

eras of human history

yet still have a hard time

grasping the continuum

of gender & sexuality.

I don’t understand what’s so shocking

about two men holding hands

I will never be able to grasp

why some people would go out

of their way to picket a funeral

of a soldier because they were gay.

This is for the boys in purple coats,

the tough girls,

and gay soldiers

to the long haired dude

and buzz cut dykes

to the gender queer

and straight allies.

Know this:

Your heart is the holiest chapel.

Love is the sharpest sword.

Your skin, a carefully stitched miracle.

I hear that even God marvels

at how it fits you

so well.

Most of the time, I can’t sleep.

And even on the nights I find myself asleep,

my mind stays awake, victimized

by your voice in my dreams.

I can’t help but wonder about your overdose,

and how it must have sounded when your soul

bubbled and frothed up out of your mouth,

and if you were scared when you woke up

dying and alone—just like sometimes I wonder

why, four years later, your number is still kept in my phone.

And if I were to call it right now,

would a strange woman’s voice answer

in a monotone to tell me there was no longer

service to the sounds of your pulse.

And that wherever your dreams sailed you to

has no area code. So I can never tell you

that I am still mad at you.

I know it was not your intention

to die. You only meant to get high,

but you were never supposed to go.

So some nights I find myself asleep and alone,

and I wake up to wonder if I’m a bad person,

because I would never trade places with you.

And I took the pills too.

So I just need to hear your voice tell me

because I know now, that you know:

Are these voices a sign?

Is there too much or too little of God in my mind?

So sometimes I wonder how an angel’s voice sounds.

I imagine it has to be something like the way your voice sounded

when your body finally flipped over, and down.

And how my ears curdled, as your throat seemed to implode,

setting loose the most inhuman, unearthly sound.

I knew then, as the sky came unskinned,

that nothing had ever, could ever, would ever be whole again.

If I had to guess, that moment was the sound

of a band of angels using a human’s mouth

to tear open the clouds and raise up your soul

to a place of wonder that is not yet my time to know.

We become poets in an attempt

to tether words to righteousness,

our notebooks to social consciousness.

Sitting cross-legged and anxious

in wingback chairs, we sip lattes

to news of regimes firing American-made

artillery into crowds of folk, their bodies

pickled by the sun. They line streets

in countries we never think about.

And we suck our teeth and ask a thesaurus

to become a machete.

And as romantic as pacifism is,

these days I dream of dictators falling

head first into karma, and I forget to be afraid…

If I could write this shit in fire, I would write this shit in fire.

This ain’t poetry, it’s rage unmuted.

A verb, a means, an end…

This is my body.

This is a sacrifice.

This is South Side Chicago and Compton, California.

Red Hook Projects in Jersey, Roosevelt Projects in Brooklyn.

This is severed hands, clubs against flesh, black boots

to pregnant bellies, sterilizations, inoculations,

leg irons and chains. The bit, the noose.

This is a war cry.

Tell Massa I’m comin’ back,

carrying fire in my knapsack.

Tell him this is Sankofa and Amandla.

Tell him I’m Patrice Lumumba, Steve Biko,

Fred Hampton, Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman…

Tell him they have been born again in me.

Tell him this shit ain’t no poem.

This is me running naked from sugarcane

and cotton fields having dropped my croaker sack.

Tell him, he can call me Karma.

I am re-fleshing the bones, a witch, a root-worker,

a sorceress, a priestess, a gangster,

Tell him…

This is the result of segregation.

Tell him this is the result of integration.

Tell him I have never been invisible.

Tell him he has never been invincible.

Tell him I will melt the barbed wire

and steel bars of prison yards,

they will flow over him like lava.

I am returned.

I am blood-thirsty.

I am fangs and hooks

and swollen feet in welfare lines,

the gauntlet thrown down,

lines drawn in the sand.

I am apocryphal.

Historical deletions gathering

themselves up and into textbooks.

Tell him I am the niece of exploitation

on a rice and pancake box,

come to collect the royalties

for Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.

I am a line of smoke,

a rain dance, the tomahawk used

to kill the first invader,

the streets of Benghazi pocked with

prayer beads and shell casings,

the juxtaposition of faith and savagery.

Tell him I am African wide hips and American bulimia.

It is the deepest kind of contradiction.

If I could write this shit in fire, I would write this shit in fire.

Tell Massa I am coming back.

Rush of wind, I’m coming back.

A pound of flesh, I’m coming back.

I’m coming back Massa

I’m coming back Massa

I’m coming back.

First, she finds out the preference of the man she’s seeing

that night—blondes or brunettes—becomes the woman on the box.

Most often she’s a redhead, or is it Light Auburn,

True Pomegranate, Number 4RR?

She blow-dries her hair upside-down,

and every time she flips over she’s a new version of my mom,

a rose that keeps blooming

into a different shade of itself.

If the man of the night is a lawyer, she will rub

her wrists and the nape of her neck with money.

If he’s a doctor, she will prick her finger

with a sewing needle and dab a fresh glow on her cheeks.

It seems I’m always zipping her

into a new dress.

I’m the only girl in school (whose mother isn’t dead)

who doesn’t know how to braid her own hair.

But I know how to take a whore’s bath

which is what mom calls a quick rinse

in just a few inches of water, some rose soap

scrubbed under your armpits and crotch.

I know how to shave hair that hasn’t grown in yet.

I know you don’t have to wear panties

with tights. I know that if you hold a match

to an eyeliner pencil,

it goes on smooth

as a lie.

The boy has a girlfriend who isn’t me and I say, okay. The boy says he just wants to be friends with benefits and I say, me too. The boy says he thinks it’s really cool that my mom doesn’t care if he sleeps in my bed even though he’s nine years older. The boy promises he will let me know before he comes, but never does. The boy laughs when I call him an asshole. The boy calls me a bitch and I stay. Good dog.

Did you know that women kill themselves

in prettier ways than men?

While a man might open his face

with a shotgun, a woman prefers the wrists.

A woman is always a portrait

of pills. Gasoline filling up in the garage

as if waiting for you

to take her for a ride.

My love

sits at the foot of my bed,

crying.

The doctors told him

it might be serious,

to wait a week

for the blood results.

To avoid sex

in the meantime.

My love, he loves me.

I know because he’s warning me,

and because of how he holds me—

like if I tried to let go,

he wouldn’t

pull harder.

And I know I love him too

because I reach for his belt

and begin unbuckling.

I know he won’t find another woman

who loves like this, the way my mother

taught me how.

so if I

am a brain in a vat on a runaway train

traveling at terminal velocity

from San Francisco to Cincinnati,

and you are a materialist,

a thing in yourself

with emergent consciousness

under your own motive power,

and you are traveling in my direction,

do we meet?

might we intersect

at the continental divide

at one minute after midnight

on the first day of the rest of your life?

and would I know you if I saw you?

or might we cross paths

like matter and dark matter?

or like you are in a dimension

perpendicular to my own (1)

and my epistemology lacks a category

adequate to contain you?

or am I just a

gedankenexperiment (2)

running in a minor process

of a massively multi-core galaxy

with its own emergent consciousness

algorithmically computing a Leibniz (3) function

searching for the best of all possible worlds?

iterating holograms

filled with star stuff

and the possibility of consciousness,

self-consciousness, and will

(will to power, will to live,

will to question),

and if each simulation begins

and proceeds and completes, and then?

what? is it cached in the dust of the nebula

left on its own, entropy (4) increasing,

the information free to dissolve?

and what if inside

one of these virtualizations,

a process is allowed to revolve

and recurse on itself

on an infinite loop?

in a moment of uplift will it question itself?

would it construct a story

to tell to its Self, full of people

and places and things?

would it populate a planet

initiate a history

extract science from philosophy (5)

and put doubts in people's minds

about brains and vats

and what it’s like to be a bat (6)

and whether we connect

or we only intersect?

so if I am a brain in a vat (7),

and you are my dialectical opposite (8)

and we are the Socratic method (9)

let me ask you this:

when do we get to the epiphany?

---

1

Consider Edward A. Abbott’s Flatland. Read it. Then go read it to a kid, or download the free audiobook at archive.org.

2

Gedankenexperiment is a thought experiment

3

“Leibniz” is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a 17th-18th century polymath, rationalist, mathematician and natural philosopher, a pillar of western culture. He was parodied by Voltaire as Doctor Pangloss in Candide, and was fictionalized beautifully in Neal Stephenson’s brilliant Baroque Cycle, which is super long. I suggest the audio book.

4

Entropy. Dig, if you will, thermodynamics. Allow it to bake your noodle, to whatever degree you wish. Entropy has to do with order / disorder, and information.

5

Before science was ripe, still a green fruit clinging to the tree of what-the-hell-is-going-on, it was called “natural philosophy.” Through human cultural evolution it became actual science.

6

“What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” is a paper by Thomas Nagel, written in the 1970s. Philosophy of Mind is a real brain melter, but it is also wonderful and strange.

7

“brain in a vat on a runaway train” was an actual example, in a lecture. I wish I could be sure which course it came from.

8

Dialectic. Start with Hegel before you go near Marx.

9

Socratic Method. Have you read Plato? Socrates is frustrating and irritating, but the way he calls people out on their bullshit is fantastic.

I found your poem.

That one you performed at the poetry slam.

That you posted to YouTube.

That your friends tagged me in on Facebook.

That you left inconspicuously on the table

under the tea service you neglected to bus,

despite the signs posted everywhere

asking patrons to “Please bus your own dishes.”

I guess you wanted me to find it,

but weren’t ballsy enough to just

hand it to me yourself.

You know the one,

pretty much the same as all the poems

all the other poet boys have written

to all the other cute barista girls

since the dawn of time, or at least

since the dawn of espresso machines

and cute barista girls.

But yours was different.

The way you captured my cuteness

with the word cute, and nailed

the color of my eyes with the adjective

espresso-colored.

How original you are, poet boy!

Just like a skim vanilla latte.

You should know skim vanilla lattes are not original.

I make at least twenty-seven of them every shift.

Skim milk has no body to it. It’s pretty much water.

So you’re kind of like a watered-down,

artificially sweetened cup of coffee.

How’s that metaphor—ya?

Also, my eyes aren’t brown.

I’ve never seen a hazel espresso bean,

and calling me cute isn’t cute.

Puppies are cute. Me, I’m fierce. I’m more

avalanche than baby Chihuahua, more dangerous

that a pit bull and snottier than a pug.

I did not put vanilla in your mocha because

I must have sensed you liked it that way.

That shit was not fate,

it’s our secret recipe.

I know having your order memorized

makes you feel special,

but I have everyone’s order memorized.

It’s kind of like my job.

Which is what this is: A job.

I don’t come to the library

or the cubical at your temp job

or your mother’s basement

to spy on you while you’re working

on your poetry.

I am not waiting for the day

you finally get up the courage

to tell me you think I’m cute.

I’m waiting for the day you

tip me more than a quarter.

Seriously, this poor poet

thing is played out.

I know how much you spend on

coffee and muffins and soup each week.

Buy a can of Campbell’s,

and leave me a dollar next time.

Then maybe I’ll notice you

or something. But probably not.

I got my eye on the androgynous punk

behind the deli counter down the street.

I like the way they cut my meat.

It’s real cute.

my mom holds her accent like a shotgun,

with two good hands.

her tongue,

all brass knuckle

slipping in-between her lips.

her hips are all laughter

and wind clap.

she speaks a sancocho of spanish and english,

pushing up and against one another in rapid fire.

there is no tellin’ my mama to be “quiet.”

she don’t know “quiet.”

her voice is one size

better fit all and you best not

tell her to hush. she waited

too many years for her voice to arrive

to be told it needed house-keeping.

english sits in her mouth, remixed

so “strawberry” becomes eh-strawbeddy

and “cookie” becomes eh-cookie

and kitchen, key chain, and chicken

all sound the same.

my mama doesn’t say, “yes.”

she says, ah ha

and suddenly

the sky in her mouth

becomes a Hector Lavoe song.

her tongue

can’t lay itself down

flat enough

for the english language.

it got too much hip.

too much bone,

too much conga,

too much cuatro

to two step.

got too many piano keys

in between her teeth.

it got too much clave,

too much hand clap, got

too much salsa to sit still.

it be an anxious child

wanting to make play-doh

out of concrete. english be too neat

for her kind of wonderful.

her words spill in conversation

between women whose hands are all they got.

sometimes our hands are all we got,

and accents remind us that we are still

bomba, still plena.

say, “wepa!”

and a stranger becomes your hermano.

say, “dale!”

and a crowd becomes a family reunion.

my mama’s tongue is a telegram from her mother

decorated with the coqui’s of el campo,

so even when her lips can barely

stretch themselves around english,

her accent

is a stubborn compass

always pointing her

towards home.

All the dude said,

arm cocked over the back of his chair,

leaning into the tittering ear of his friend was:

Great…Another Woman Poem.

That’s all he said. My hand to God.

But my cunt growled ferocious

over her straw-broken back, burst through

her sensible and clean cotton cocoon—

swelling clit flopping out of the folds like

the tongue of a timber wolf, rabid.

My vagina did the Grinch’s heart

a thousand times better. Inflated,

first to the size of a watermelon,

knocking the microphone clean

off the stage, then elongated –

LIKE.       A.       COCK!

Because she’s  a l w a y s   wanted

to be a cock! Though in the newspaper

the next day, she looked more like a giant

butternut squash, an innocent swollen

gourd that promptly crushed the host

and half of the screaming crowd to death

as they queued up at the back door

trying to escape.

When her mouth finally opened,

she was the size of a hot air balloon.

The rest of my body flailing around

behind her like a rag-doll glued

to a Goodyear Blimp by the crotch.

And like a douche-seeking missile,

she locked in on the slithering throat

of the man who woke her from her slumber,

spread her lips like the wings of a giant pink bat

and swallowed that motherfucker whole.

Didn’t even bother to chew.

But…she had teeth.

Sharp, drooling things,

all of them studded in gold

with the words NO

IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE

When she was roughly the size

of a downtown building, she had swallowed

the venue, three city blocks, a Dr. Pepper 10 billboard,

and 4 transit buses chock FULL of men telling her

how pretty she’d be if she would just smile.

So she Smiled…

And they stopped smiling.

There were swat teams and zookeepers

and National Guardsmen letting loose

a torrent of bullets and tranquilizer darts.

Snipers set up on rooftops as she emptied

entire strip clubs into her mouth like miniature

boxes of sweet and tangy Halloween candy,

stopping only to floss between her consent-chops

with their gleaming silver poles.

Hulked out and Twat-Smashing helicopters like tiny toy planes

(TWAT ANGRY! TWAT SMAAAAAAAAAASH),

she threw back her head and laughed the deep

and ancient laugh of a beast man cannot kill

because man has not taken the time to understand.

And when she finally, finally felt like her point

had been made, she shrank quietly back down

beneath my skirt and purred like the gentle

and beautiful and VALID thing

that she always has been.

So if you were thinking, and I mean, even THINKING

about rolling your eyes at just another woman poem,

I’d really take a second to reconsider, broseph.

Because sometimes

my vagina

gets angry.

And BELIEVE ME,

you will not like her

that way.

Dude on Twitter says:

I was having sex with my girl

when she started her period.

I dumped that bitch immediately.

Dear nameless Dummy on Twitter,

You’re the reason my daughter

cried funeral tears when she started

HER period, the sudden grief

all young girls feel after the matriculation

from childhood and the induction into a reality

that includes negotiating people like you

and your disdain for what a woman’s body

can do. Here begins an anatomy lesson

infused with feminist politics because

I HATE you.

There is a thing called a uterus.

It sheds itself every 28 days or so

(in my case every 23 days.

I have always been a rule breaker.

I digress.). That’s the anatomy part.

The feminist politic part is

that women know how

to let things go.

How to let a dying thing

leave the body. How to regenerate.

How to become a new thing,

just waxing and waning

no different than the moon

and the tides, both of which influence

how YOU behave. I digress.

Women have vaginas that can speak to each other.

By this I mean when we are with our friends, our sisters,

Our menstrual cycles will actually sync UP.

My own vagina is mad influential.

EVERYBODY I love knows

how to bleed with me.

Hold onto that. There’s a metaphor in it.

But when YOUR mama carried YOU,

the ocean in her belly was

what made you buoyant,

made you possible.

You had it under your tongue

when you burst through her skin wet

and panting from the heat of her body.

The body whose machinery

you now mock on social media,

THAT body wrapped you

in everything that was miraculous about it

and sung you lullabies laced in platelets,

without which you wouldn’t have

no Twitter account at all, motherfucker.

I digress.

See, women know the world better

because of the blood that visits us.

It interrupts our favorite white skirts

and shows up at dinner parties uninvited.

Blood will do that.

Period.

It will come when you are not prepared for it.

Blood does that.

Period.

Blood is the biggest siren.

Women understand that blood misbehaves. Period.

It does not wait for a hand signal

or a welcome sign above the door.

And when you deal in blood,

over and over again like we do,

when it keeps returning to you…

Well, that makes you a warrior.

And while all good generals

know NOT to discuss battle plans

with the enemy,

let me say this, Dummy on Twitter:

If there is any balance in the universe at all,

you will be blessed with daughters.

Blessed.

Etymologically, ‘bless’ means to make bleed.

See, now it’s a lesson in linguistics.

In other words,

Blood SPEAKS. That’s the message.

Stay with me.

I pray your daughters

teach you what all men

must one day come to know:

That women, made of moonlight,

magic, and macabre, will make you

know the blood. Will get it all over

the sheets and car seats. Women.

Will introduce you to their insides.

Period.

And if you are as unprepared

as we sometimes are…

It will get all over you

and leave a forever stain.

Period.

So, to my daughter:

Should anybody be fool enough

to mishandle the wild geography

of your body, how it rides

a red running current

like any good wolf or witch…

Well then bleed, baby.

Give that blood a biblical name,

something made of stone and mortar.

Give it a name he can’t pronounce.

Name it for Eve’s first rebellion

in that garden.

Name it after the last little girl

to have her genitals mutilated

in Kinshasa—that was this morning.

Give it as many syllables as

there are unreported rape cases.

Name the blood something mighty,

something unlanguageable

something in hieroglyphs,

something that sounds like

the end of the world.

Something with crooked teeth

and two fat fists.

Name it what your great great grandmother

called herself before those ships came

and left her loveless.

Name it for the roar

between your legs,

and for the women

who will NOT be nameless here.

Just bleed anyhow.

Spill your impossible scripture

all over the good furniture.

Just bleed…on everything…

He loves.

Period.

In 1998, in Oakland, California,

a 5’11, forty-five year old black man

was gunned down on his own front porch.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

If you ask the Oakland Police Department

if there were any suspects, they will tell you

the shooting almost seemed to be accidental.

That sometimes bullets don’t have agendas,

and meetings don’t always take place on street

corners. In these parts, these things

just happen.

In 2013, the white boy outside the poetry slam venue

told me he is so tired of black poets always talking

about struggle. Said he clenches his teeth because

it is always so damn awkward. Said, There is too much

beauty in this Boston skyline to waste breath on oppression.

Oppressors never hear the words anyway.

In 1998, in Oakland, California,

a 5’11, forty-five year old black man

went outside to light a cigarette.

Kissed his two children on peak of their hairline,

pressed his chest against their foreheads,

closed the half-fallen screen door behind him.

Told them he’d be right back.

Would have told them he loved them,

but told them he’d be right back.

The ambulance took twenty-five minutes

to come on-site. He died instantly.

The Oakland Police would’ve told you

he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was just in the wrong house. In the wrong city.

He was just the wrong ‘nigga’ in the wrong hood.

In these parts, these things

just happen.

1998 was the year my father

took me on a car ride. He fast-forwarded

a Smokey Robinson cassette tape to

“Tracks of My Tears,” waited 2 minutes

into the song to tell me that his brother, my uncle

Nathaniel, was gunned down on the splinters

of his own front porch while lighting a cigarette.

Said, If you ask the Oakland Police,

they would probably say he was yet

another black man in America doing

what they do best:

Falling.

White Boy,

don’t talk to me about struggle.

Your belly seems to be full

of first world problems you choose

not to digest, so I write to remind you.

Because there is not enough time in the day

to remind you there are 300 Sean Bells

for every Cornel West. To remind you

my uncle didn’t make the evening news.

To remind you there were no witnesses.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

He was not a gambler.

He was not a drug dealer.

He did not owe the IRS Money.

I suppose he was just a black man in America

doing what they do best.

Yes, we Black Poets tend talk about struggle.

We Black Poets tend to lean on broken glass

and bleed, trying to communicate our thoughts.

We write because we are desperate to fill

that awkward silence between our fists

and your mouth every time you utter ignorance.

I am sorry if it makes you feel so damn uncomfortable.

White Boy, I won’t pretend

to know your struggle. I won’t pretend

I understand the woes of a twenty-two year old

white male from Southern Connecticut.

I deeply, deeply apologize, White Boy,

because I can only imagine how difficult

these last three minutes have been for you.

The man behind the bodega counter

asked me if I could deep throat?

Said,

You look like the kind of girl who can swallow,

who can make a man forget that his girl

doesn’t do certain things

In an attempt to respond,

I thought:

Irrational of me,

to be both woman and hungry,

to confuse myself with the kind

of person who has rights.

To be woman and house a body

is to break all the floors.

Is to know most men think your mouth a door.

Think your mouth always open.

Think you steadfast—ready,

Think you beckon their call.

Their call loud as sirens,

their sirens break all the windows.

You, woman, house a body

that stay breaking.

Creaking men think the fragments are an opening,

walk through you like your walls are an invitation,

run their fingers through all your panels.

You don’t recall thinking yourself

welcome mat, except for the fact that you

came out the womb both woman and body.

And men, like most people, want to crawl

back into that body.

And you, woman, are a body

that both absorbs and expels,

so naturally, you the first they coming for.

Dare speak?

Bitch.

Feminist.

Man-basher,

even though you ain’t bashing all men,

just the men who treat women and think

this kind of way.

Still you’re man-hater,

you be mad lonely.

Ain’t no man gonna love you

echoed loudly.

Like that’s the only accomplishment

us women strive for.

Like that’s the only role us women play.

Patriarchy so evident,

it seeps through every floor you got,

until everyone is calling you out your name.

You, no longer Stacy,

you whore from downtown.

Head game so good,

got a man walking in the right direction.

See how quickly you become

a mouth again? A cavity?

Half temple and brothel,

both cathedral and jezebel,

cattle and disparaged.

You are not just dressed up,

high-heels, stomping pavement.

You, you asking for it

as if your body

were an eager child

who can’t use its words.

You, woman, can’t form words but movement.

Movement demands attention,

attention says you deserve everything

you get, regardless if you wanted it.

Because, what do you know of desire

except for what is told to you?

What do you know of your body,

except for what is told to you?

Who are you except for what is needed from you?

What is needed from you other than a mouth

and the right kind of softness?

So, I stood there,

my jaw a waving flag,

legs the right kind

of run ready, and said:

If your girl can’t swallow,

how does she eat?

This is my body,

not a fumbling mass

of flesh and limb.

It is a concert hall.

An orchestra:

Philharmonic-Erectus.

The liver is a low-sliding trombone.

Sounds like jazz and Creole coastline,

smells like Bourbon Street.

Can no longer properly

filter out the bad notes,

Lets sour music infect the bloodstream.

Chest cavity: wind section.

Left lung: flute and nicotine,

right lung: clarinet and Albuterol.

They struggle with timing,

can barely catch their breath

between songs.

Pancreas: contrabassoon,

lowest instrument in the entire orchestra,

reaches so far down on the clef that it is felt

(rather than heard) in your teeth, your fingertips.

Felt in your fingertips, when it forgets the music

that is where it is felt. Blood drawn, tested.

Insulin injections are the only instruments that

will ever pick up its harmony.

Nerves: kettle drum, bass drum, cymbal snare.

They snap and fire under too much pressure.

They are untuned and wild and insistent,

the nervous system houses the maestro who

has lost control of his musicians.

Heart: first violin.

Nothing plays without its count.

When it stops, there is no more music.

There are no bad instruments,

only careless composers.

When the doctors said Diabetes

High Blood Pressure

Asthma, Inflamed Liver

Repressed Immune System

High Risk of Stroke and Heart Attack

I realized, I was holding the pen.

It was the first time I asked God to take this away,

make me anything but a writer.

It is a hard truth, to stand guilty in

the mirror and face the empty opera boxes,

the naked stage of belly. To realize you were given

to this world in all the right keys, now rusted, sharp.

tone deaf.

So you learn a new song before there is nothing

left inside of you but silence.

485 pounds: a funeral march.

The grave is a trumpet's swell of home.

412 pounds: my stomach picks up the growl

of bass line. I learn to love the hollow thrum

of percussion.

380 pounds: I fire the hi-hats in my knees,

let them know their crash and ricochet

are no longer required here.

385 pounds: I do not give up when the strings break.

379 pounds: I do not give up when I restring.

This is not for the instruments, this is for the Symphony.

320 pounds: my pancreas reclaims its solo, but

I can't feel it anymore. My fingertips heal

292 pounds: People still gawk

at my warm-up, hold their ears

at my crescendo. But I play loud,

sign every note with my progress.

I have sold tickets to concerts

I will not play for another fifty years.

But God as my witness:

I will be there to play them.

My grandmother is 84 when she tells me

she never wanted to marry my grandfather.

I have asked enough questions to know

she means how could a 17 year old girl

marry a man she had only known a few months?

She means he had the right passport

and her father said yes.

She means she doesn’t have any teeth

because she lost her toothbrush so early in the war.

My grandmother was ten

when her hometown of L’viv, Ukraine

was bombed for the first time. That day,

Irene took her six-year-old brother Julian

to get milk from the market,

their house on the hill, shrinking

behind them.

The bombs started on the other side

of the city—the sky a concrete floor of fire—

and Irene running through the streets,

a giant glass jug in her arms

and a tiny boy clinging to her hand.

My grandmother means

Julian survived a concentration camp,

but we do not talk about it.

She means she worked

in an ammunition factory

Hitler had built underground.

Her fingers pulsing with bullets.

She means the Nazi officers

fed her dog glass to kill him.

She means when her house was bombed

in half, they lived in the basement

with pillows over the windows

to prevent bullets from coming inside.

She means the men lined up in the street,

and every tenth one shot in the head.

The women shaved, naked in carts.

Her body was so frail, the doctors

told her she would never have children.

For years, she had to be sedated

simply so she could sleep.

She wanted to grow up

to be a physician or a scientist.

My grandmother did not go to high school.

She taught herself English

from reading the newspaper.

She met her mother-in-law

for the first time thirty years

into her marriage.

My family has spent my entire life romanticizing

the way my grandfather survived World War II,

but it is my grandmother who is left behind.

She is the constant reminder of what war looks like.

That I am here because she survived.

She spent decades refusing to speak of the bodies,

the camps—refusing to tell her daughter when

her wedding anniversary is—and now her mouth

is a nail gun. She cannot stop spilling the horror

from her tiny body and Ukraine

is still on fire.

When my grandmother visited L’viv five years ago,

she was angry at the way her city

has never recovered—but my grandmother

has never recovered. They are both still choking

on the sound of bullets.

My grandmother is full of holes,

but she loves those around her

as though she is forcing them

to rebuild, to survive.

My grandmother is 84 when she tells me

she has been having the same dream for years.

She is trapped at the bottom of a dark well

and her mother is standing at the top.

My grandmother climbs and climbs

and climbs the walls around her,

but she can never get out.