BLACK GIRL FLY (Poem)
If you watch and listen,
I’ll teach you how to spin faster than
thunder claps through tumors,
leap and land lighter than liberation.
DIARY ENTRY from June 17, 2024
Anger is my birthright,
but so is peace.
I remind myself
of the highest version of me,
slowly morph into her
PRODUCTIVITY IS A FORM OF STRUGGLE
Productivity is a form of struggle
when it forces one to ignore their needs
to achieve the vision of a corporation.
“You Should Write a Book!”
If God granted me $5 every time someone told me I should write a book about my journey through breast cancer, I’d be able to buy a new pair of retro Nike Jordan 4’s by now. How do you write about a journey that is not over?
ODE TO OVEREXTENDERS (Poem)
I start to overextend;
a raspy voice over my right shoulder yells:
“Girl, save yourself!”
BACKSLIDER (Poem)
I don’t wanna worship with my oppressors—
prey praying hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder
with one eye open.
WATERMELON SEEDS (Poem)
Have you heard of
the girl who swallowed fifty black watermelon seeds?
In 9 months, she birthed sugar babies.
INTELLIGENT STUPIDITY (Poem)
inside kid, clandestine friendships,
advanced academic attention magnet,
stunning and didn’t know it,
PLANT MOM (Poem)
I know I am depressed when I stop watering my plants.
It’s like I need a visual representation of wilting.
PEDUNCLES (Poem)
Static fills my right hip, crrrrsppppp crrrrsppppp!
Begging for a kiss, a loosening.
Despite her shallow roots, my Hoya Hindu rope
has grown peduncles—
YOU CHOOSE (Poem)
I rudely request, require and desire a refrain from chronic pain
because this belligerent, bony, buss-down bundles to her buttcheeks b*tch
is insane, bringing broken bridges and invisible incisions,
THE HAPPIEST PLACE (Poem)
I stare at the sky
and instead of asking “Why?”
I whisper, “Thanks”
and drop tears as tithes.
GENETIC (Poem)
i know how you work, i know just who you are,
a leech tryna suck the glow up out of me.
don’t you know it’s genetic,
NOTES TO THE SUPER STRONG BLACK WOMAN (Poem)
i know you had to act like a woman
and think like a man when you were still a girl.
i know you had to shrink your bones
and turn curves into lines lest you tempt.
THE PRIZEFIGHT
I balled my fists up and assumed a fighting stance.
i couldn’t see his hands.
i skipped around the ring to look menacing.
He appeared to do nothing.
THE SQUATTER
A squatter lives in my shoulders
she tore down the drywall
and built boulders,
armor for words of judgement to pierce less
THE HAUNTING
That feeling of foreigners invading my temple
hunts me.
I am hunted by emptiness behind the detectives’ eyes.
I am hunted by the ugly yellow linoleum floors
