in the way I twist my hair.
In the morning, a puff of new blue sonnets
I release from my bonnet.
But tonight a wildfire brights me.
But does she fill your middle with wildflowers? send.
II.
I (cannot) love you.
I learned this in the
fourth grade when Todd called
me ugly after another kid accused him of liking
me. She’s BLACK. No.
No.
Todd’s cry baby ass actually did like me but would
never let anyone know it
(I will never let anyone know it)
I wanted to cry then
but
when
you look like we do.
Crying is off limits too.
I love you still.
III.
Love is the way I felt when I knew you were waiting for me.
I would quicken my already rapid pace or linger a little
longer as I crossed Snelling.
Fighting to remain neutral as
I pressed into the door. Opening
myself and leaving
it there for you
to sift through.
I waited for you too. I corrected your English
and imagined the arguments we would have.
You forgot to take the garbage out again.
You take up too much space in brown spaces.
Why can’t I post pictures of us together online?
I always wanted to touch you, but there was rarely an excuse.
I remember that day in the French Quarter when you reached out and
touched my arm, gently, like you wanted to feel how brown skin
felt in the sun.
I hope that is not why.
IV.
Maybe it was selfish
to leave you and come back.
Making you love me in polaroids,
flashes and smiles
wet with temporary.
I filled photo albums
wrestling our symphonies from old SD cards
and flash drives.
In our distance we allowed ourselves long drags and
tall glasses of “I miss you more.”
What blanched me was learning that this is not just a thing people say.
I actually missed you more. Made you love me
and put myself firmly in the middle of you.
Not knowing your goodbyes had already been signed and sent.
My reply was a chalice of sour tears, spoiled.
My eyes may never dry fully.
V.
My love for you lit up downtown
Portland tonight, as I crossed the Burnside
Bridge on foot and on the phone.
I knew
that somewhere, everywhere you were
sitting with a packed heart and
a stirring mind. I knew that you
were full of me and
the volume of my love.
I was instantly in love and sorry.
Sorry because my love can have the tendency to break and there is
no doubt that you have begun to
splinter.
I do not want to know how to
turn down the July of my passion
but I hope
I hope you never long
for an early winter.
I watched the lights grow stronger
sprinkled against the blue brown backdrop.
Attempted
to locate you in the stars.
We could always find each other
in the thickest rooms.
Tenderheaded
Come sit here now
beneath the mahogany mountain that is me.
Bring the fluffy pillow from
your bed.
Grab the hard bristle brush and hair
grease.
Sit still as I weave these mazes and maps little girl, I don’t
have all night.
Lord, I never knew a more
tenderheaded child in all my damn life.
Girl you better stop twistin n turnin n
lean your
head this way. Follow the rough curves of my hands.
Let heavy fingers paint history
in every dainty hair strand.
Yes, you almost done. Tsk.
You’d think it was torture.
Look at my pretty baby, go get
the mirror in the corner.
See what we made.
Me and God did somethin
special
on your birthday.
three feet
wooden beds bunked and mismatched
pillow cases.
the sound of brown bottles
singing beneath,
our laughter
its own echo.
we dreamed together, i am
sure of it.
our stories carried us off into
the night. there was
safety there, there was no
fire, no listening for keys in
front doors.
we were each other’s medium
brown havens.
full of questions and never
hindered by answers.
full of rich fairy tales and
soft journeys away from a hard home.
full of pink promise and
purple barrettes.
i could hear every movement
you made in your sleep.
every twist of your body,
every shake of your beads.
a resting rainbow below me.
parted by three feet.
Open Promise
I promise that when you forget how to smile,
I will remind you
I will place
two field hands onto
the earth of your face
and position your glowing African lips into
a crescent moon not unlike the one that
followed our true founding mothers and fathers to freedom.
I will shake away the thick coat of dust and ash
of deceit, desperation, and lies
that threatens to bury us all alive
I will fight heart to heaven combat with each painful memory
every nightmare, fear, and flash.
I will do all of this
I will carry your spirit on my shoulders,
and write sonnets to your self esteem,
walk barefoot and open souled to my death with no hesitation,
and cry out freedom songs to your dreams.
I will do all of this
Only asking for one gesture in return,
that you do the same for me.
she called in her soul
when the street lights came on
she worked through knotted hands
and shortness of breath
doing all she knew to do
all she'd ever known
she survived
she practiced surviving on nothing
in preparation for the day
the Big White Man who thought
he lived in the sky and her
bedroom and her heart
would come to take it from her
they always did
they always took things from women like
her
when the hour got late she'd
pretend she was with Jesus
trying to remember what
her mother had tried to teach
her
she'd try to believe
she'd put on her best
front-pew sinner face
we were all with him before
we breathed life
she pulled together all the faith
her mother had left in the cupboards
and gathered it under her
pillow no matter how
withered splintered broken
it may be<
br />
as the day ended she lifted
her light from its place
between her breasts and blew
it out for safe keeping
tomorrow
she'd try her best to get it lit again
Part II
Black Lovings
“Yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived…” —James Baldwin
Myles II
The sunrise touched you
but it did not take you
away.
The sunrise touched you
and I cried into myself.
You felt no pain.
You only felt me.
The sunrise touched you.
It did not warm but
it caressed. I wanted you
to feel it, to see it.
I wanted you back.
The moon held on tight.
You belonged to me, to
her, to the night.
My skin still trembles from
missing.
“How is it possible, how is it
that such a pretty day
can cause so much pain?”
I want to scream at every moon.
Give me my sun back.
Storage
watching the sunrise
from the pool deck
still damp with yesterday’s rains.
all 27 years of you. all ten thousand tears,
every lightyear of laughter.
the chill of the heavy morning, where the breeze tickled your arms
and the birds crooned hello.
loving who you loved. still,
endlessly, divorced from logic.
the questions
that pushed you forward, and the ones that paused you.
asking yourself how you got here, why the days seem to drag
on in solitude, when will you find your own testimony?
the inertia, the deadlocks, and the uprisings
that burned inside you.
the insomnia, the wine, Jeff Buckley’s tenor, and
all the ways
your body resisted.
the ways your body carried the moon,
wore it under polka dot overall shorts and floral head wraps.
remember it all and if you cannot,
remember
tell someone what you saw,
what you
knew. let them,
remember for you.
Equilibrium
swinging, billie style
watch, the swoon and swell.
bodies, blessed with violence
here, marvel at our bullet casing bracelets
watch, us froth and frolic
tongues, dangling with luxury.
quiet story
for Gene
we sat together
loving him and
scared, we felt campus housing carpet
scratch the soles of our feet.
we would not let him disappear.
tired, we watched headlines and stared and stared
and saw, one of ours taken. saw us unimagined,
watched as sparkler gave in to wind.
he was,
gone from us.
no more Louisiana drawl
good mawnin,
no more
get ya hair lined up gul.
the evening was long with story, and with fear.
tears came, not in waves, there was no build.
they came like little bombs, planted in the corners of us,
came like concrete fists.
there was no howling only cold,
only questions and,
but he was the good one.
we stayed too quiet, lifting the moon with our nerves
sent email after email
to whom it may concern
we love him,
he is ours.
we loved him as we loved each other
one keystroke at a time.
Five Little Girls
for Black Girls who cry in the Night
i remember the day that i met her
this fifth little girl,
still too small, playing dress-up in her sister's clothes,
though not a girl any longer.
she was
there
there was another,
she laid
broken babied like the others
burning and blinded by shattered glass,
mind a jumble of fear.
she survived
to tell the story of the past
that no one wanted to hear.
she stood
skin too black like me, slight, slim, all arms and knees,
the shine of her skin shook me, glowing as if she were still aflame,
she told me her fears, gave me the gift of her pain, our pain, to keep.
lit up by her words, i stuffed her soul in my purse,
watched her focus on every word
as she told a room of burning black women her story.
"We were victims of terrorism too,
1963 was no different from 2001. We have nothing, no one
wants to hear us."
that day i sat, 19 years old and exploding,
felt the skin around my eyes melt and drip away.
she could barely see me,
as the tears set fire to my face.
“I lost four friends that day, lost my best friend, lost my sister, lost my faith.”
the ashes tickled my withered eyelashes as I reached for her hand,
she shook all of me awake as I mumbled my blazing thanks, wanting only to say:
I will survive, I will tell it too.
We are still losing our sisters to fires we cannot douse, today.
Make Believe
That the past can stay there
even though it is ever moving, swelling beneath us.
It creeps around on all fours
whispering our deepest fears into
frostbitten ears.
Do not listen. Fight the urge to
gallop backward into the frightening white
fog.
Keep the remembers at the bottom
of your shoe
wearing them out with each step
ahead. Do not allow them to rise.
Light your journey with manicured
memories and heavy pause.
The back of you will always be
there, as a reminder.
The body never shakes the
scared sweats completely.
Bend forward into the warm light, despite the
gray nightmares and missing
middle.
Leap out of the way of the
torment that turns your teeth to tinsel.
Come, frolic in the gaps.
We Let Wonder Take Us
If we are killed, let it be known
that we saw the mountains and
both oceans tickled our feet.
Let it be known that
we never let the fog or
our cloudy sunrises
keep us inward.
We shrugged off the rain
and stepped out of our doors.
We made a point to love the darkest
days. The ones that lingered like
smoke and cigarette burns in the
carpet.
Those nights were always our favorite.
We traded riches for thick-lipped
kisses and wonder.
We let the wonder take us.
Our love was our only captor
everything was movement and
wrong didn’t mean anything to us.
Then.
We left reason in the back of our
mothers’ closets and hoola-hooped
with inhibition and fright.
Let it be known that we died in
battle, bombs strapped to our hearts
, loving us into existence
fighting for our people. Searching
for dreams delivered at the bottoms
of our father’s vodka bottles and
rivers that killed.
Dying for the night. Dying for the right to live and to love ourselves.
Before you stop loving
me I want you to
see.
All of the ways you will
be losing.
Fall down inside of my fingers
and become.
Find it inside of you.
Inside of you is the only you
I need.
Beautiful, quiet, unbearable, you.
I can see you fading.
Fading out in my light.
Blinded and held captive.
Captive in my own lost love.
Don’t go missing. Please.
I see you but I think you
are getting ready.
Shoes on, back turned.
Pain left in forgotten slippers
underneath the bed.
Don’t go until I’m ready not
to fall.
Fall down inside of myself.
I need this. One last thing.
Become.
My People
An assortment of
sweets and sours all lined
up
in order of interaction.
In These Black Hands Page 2
