My people are stories.
Full of missing pieces and
laughs that dance.
Sometimes I read through
them and cry. I have
to catch myself before
my tears damage the
pages.
The pages feel like all
that I have sometimes.
I won’t give up remembering
I won’t give up.
My people.
Myles III/Still Black
Half of me swims beneath
your chest.
I hear my words enclosed in
your breath.
I am a moment
fleeting,
monumental, soul-grasping,
and sustaining.
You are the light that
streams through me.
What is the night without
the moon?
Still black, still endless, still
moving.
But it is without its pair,
its illuminating
love.
Pull
Steam raising from sun soaked
skin. What does it mean
to embody the moon and
mimic the sun?
Carrying yellows and golds
inside of you as you
chase after the night.
Following dusky stillness,
on fire with dawn’s love.
You stay warm, you stay
lighting us all with
your memories.
We try to ignore the
pull. Taking us from
the now. Releasing us
in the past and leaving
us there to roam.
I am, we are still there
even as we work, play,
live. Trapped in you,
wet and warm with
remembers.
Brown boy
I am sorry you could not
stay. I wish the
world was ours and
that we could walk
together.
I will never stop dreaming
of your smile, your
open eyes and your
sunshine future.
Your life was brief but
you are a lifetime. You
are the best part of
me, of my life. You
brown boy that I love,
I cannot ever be
without you. I am
you. We are one
and the same.
The same yellow
sunrise. Bright and
fleeting.
Night Surrounds Us
Long evenings that
linger like scents
of rose.
Waiting. So many
minutes piled into
waiting. The moon
plays hide and seek
with the sun and
we run.
From memories, faces
sleepless nights and
fear.
Fear that mutes movement
and steals sound.
Long evenings that
sample songs of mourning.
A deep blue that settles
into the blackest black.
Night surrounds us and
we tuck away our smiles.
We On
This world was never ready for the
swell of you.
So let them wonder.
Let their pondering buzz around you like
the thirsty honey bees.
Move against their music, side-stepping
questions that never seem to
end. Just
wait.
We on the way.
Follow the crystal moonlight when you lose
your footing.
Do not fear the loss, the win, the
draw. Remember the feeling of resting
on cold concrete, the lines left in your legs,
the tear streaks you wore proudly for decades.
Hold on.
We on the way.
Create, blast, breathe beautiful into
the cold forsaken places.
Do not be afraid to cast
shadows, spells, memories that suffocate.
Fold my hands into yours and listen for the looming sunrise and
remember.
We on our way.
An Answered Prayer
I prayed for you. I loved
you into life.
There were nights before you
when I kneaded my belly
making room for all of you.
Big smile.
A laugh that rocks a room.
The music of you.
I saw you coming.
In the corners of my dreams.
In my most vivid visions.
I was a witness. I am.
Then and now.
Even now. I watch you flit
and groove into spaces too small
for you.
And collapse whole worlds.
I sit, hands in my lap.
Sight not what it once was.
But I can see all of you.
Every single step.
Instead We Roam
The sunsets sing songs
of longing.
As the light fades we
let the insides out.
Our less flattering, painful
selves come creeping and
we turn to face the
moon.
We cannot hope to swim
among the stars tonight.
They close the doors in
our faces and prepare
their judgement.
Instead we roam and
play in the red dust.
We listen as the music
rises and swells.
Taking us with it.
Taking us away and
never promising a return.
We listen as the day dies.
Black Lovings
The kinds that seep deep
into
you like, like the night
air when the sun retreats.
The kinds that sing softly over
you while you travel through timeless
dreams.
The kinds that grip you by sunkissed
shoulders and shake awake
the universe that resides inside.
The kinds that not even death could stop.
It is the kind that wanders in and out of
spirits’ worlds in search of redemption.
It is a mother in one cold place,
a warm son in another. A golden
line that keeps them tethered to each other.
The Black Lovings are concrete
ridges in the soles of our feet.
No longer for sale, we have always been
Free.
Black Lovings is baby’s breath, Jamaican
rum, spitting laughter through fire
tears.
Black Lovings is
an untamable ocean,
murderous, and fierce.
Sunflower Monday
This, our yellow day, will be
centuries long. Petals
spread at your oak feet,
feel your hands sink into
the earth.
A beginning, a beginning, a
beginning.
Delicate, growing perfectly impermanent.
I walked the city streets in
ninety degree DC heat to meet you
and your love.
Found you tucked under
couch cushions and geometric
rugs.
Thank you for sour saturday
nights and crowded sundays.
Thank you most of all for our
Sunflower Monday.
How dare we laugh?
How dare we laugh in this
world they say is not ours to seek?
How dar
e we sit up, black
backs tall and strong against
our seats?
How dare we light flames in
small places? Blazing the confinement
offered. How dare we
Be.
Breathe.
See.
How dare we call ourselves, set
ourselves, make ourselves
Free.
Together
Weathered and warm
I rest in your cobalt shadow, there
is love here and, there is
home here.
Moonshine kisses on collar bone,
mixing melanin with mist.
You hold my
broken body
in your dry coral palms.
Put me together again.
Chipped here and there. No
worse for wear.
4 Hours in a Missouri Street
for Michael Brown
In the summertime,
in the summertime
our skin shines, glows like target
practice.
In the summertime,
in the summertime
our smiles sing, against ebony
skin, hard to swallow. Straight
gin.
In the summertime,
in the summertime our laughs
bounce off walls like tennis
balls. Unhidden.
In the summertime we glisten,
too bright for simple eyes.
In the summertime we do not die.
In the summertime we fly, rise.
Untitled
I have written you one million
songs. Lullabies and ballads
alike.
They all sound like the
breaths you will never
take. They all make
me moan from deep
within.
The moan of a childless mother
left clawing at her skin.
The pain is always moments
away, inches.
I refuse to pack it up
in boxes with the rest of you.
Instead I
let it rise as
it pleases. Lean towards the
hurricane, tip my hat
to typhoon.
Grasp it around the waist.
Embrace.
The pain is memory, it is confirmation that
you were here.
We were here. Together.
The fear, the love,
the way my body shook. I am
still shaking now.
You taught me to stop
performing. The show stopped
the day that you arrived.
No more time to pretend,
no more space to hide.
No more someone else’s vibrato or
strangers’ pirouettes.
I am lyricist, choreographer,
and director
now.
I run spotlight and sing
the big solo too.
The songs I wrote for you
are tattooed on the insides of my forearms.
They are there for
safekeeping. Here they
sit.
Alongside everything I
never told you.
In my arms where I
will not get to hold you.
I will sing them until the
world knows them word
for word.
Sing with me now.
Her Body, a Museum
She is a woman in repair.
Body aches and nightmares
skip, through her.
Each day,
a reminder of
what is not, what was, what
will not be.
Shoelaces bind her together as
she learns to walk again.
Learns to breathe again.
Learns to
be
again.
She is with the sun as it peeks behind
the doughy clouds.
Why is this place, this clear
and cloudy place the only
one she calls home?
Why does the red dirt under
fingernails, offer comfort? Her hair
dry, unlike sharp coal
eyes, unlike slippery
palms that leave gray sky stains.
Her mind, a bundle of impatient
fireworks.
Each one waiting its turn
to blow.
Her body, a museum.
Here, beauty has a home.
About the Author
Salisa Lynne Grant was born in Providence, Rhode Island and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. Her first love is and always will be poetry. Her second love is her son Myles who lives within her heart and within her art. For more from Salisa readers can find her work in the poetry anthology Scattered Petals: poetry for remembering faith, hope, patience and courage and the forthcoming poetry anthology A Garden for Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living. Readers can also find content from Salisa on her Youtube Channel: “Foreseeing Salisa” and her Instagram: @foreseeingsalisa. Salisa is completing her PhD in African American Literature at Howard University and works as an English professor. She currently resides in the Washington DC area.
In These Black Hands Page 3
