Nothing New Under The Sun
Like a carcass-fat lazy river,
the chyron lays bare the fates
of Chiron & nem, & we call
that Tuesday. I’m saying boys
become memories & nobody
flinches. Black girl turns up
missing & business as usual.
I know the status quo, that it
hovers above us, kept aloft by
wings of wasps. O the woe in
the winds from those wings.
The wails in their wake. Odds
are you, too, know at least one
somebody snatched up by a
hungry bullet. The blood on
every other headline turns my
skin into spiders. I curl away
from TV screens like a light-
allergic peony. I keep the drapes
drawn in all my rooms. Told
the sun she ain’t welcome cuz
she always got new names to
report stolen from the night
before. She must be tired of death’s
grit on her tongue, the whines
of souls made to bury those they’ve
birthed. Ain’t no way she can’t
hear the choir of cracked hearts
chorusing hoarse hollers up to
her morning light—somebody’s
stink-stink now a song stuck
like a lump in the throat of a
love left behind. Left to wonder
if their gone-too-soon found
their way to a place softer than
this country of shrapnel, with
its clouds full of acid rain & mile
after mile of soil bloodied to ruin.
On our birthday, Thurgood Marshall & I discuss precedent
—After Tariq Thompson
What of would-be doctors born in chains.
Authors forbidden to carry pencil & paper.
Prospective politicians pecked to death by
Crow, left out to be lunch for vultures. To say
I was first is to deny those who were denied chance.
I hear you—there are billions of stars in the universe,
what we call the sun just happens to be the closest one,
the one that’s still alive. You get it, all them bones under
Alabama could’ve been put to better use in their living.
I see them in my dreams. Sometimes it’s hands reaching
out the muck like reeds in a swamp. Others, a meadow
overwhelmed with tulips, their yellow cups brimming
with yellowed teeth sent skyward like pollen when the
winds blow. I wish I knew what to make of this.
On our birthday, Medgar Evers & I discuss Fear
—After Tariq Thompson
Midnight rain pelts the roof, & sometimes I confuse its sound with that
of a noose being knotted. The wind assaults the shutters & I think
approaching mob. We pace our children through practice drills praying
these skills are never tested. At dinner we sit round our table hoping
the window meets no opposition to its wholeness. I know better my
shotgun’s heft than a night of peaceful slumber. I’d swap the broken
glass in my stomach for butterflies, but that wouldn’t lower the threat on
my house. I could stop speaking truth but that wouldn’t make me any
less a nigga in Mississippi. Fear not is actually terrible advice for a
nigga in Mississippi. At the marches, we still singing of futures promised
to too few of us. Police dogs remember the sweet of our blood & whine
for more. When shot through a megaphone, a threat is usually a
promise. When shot through Black skin, a bullet is usually forgiven.
When freedom rings, we’ll answer & ask, what took you so long?
