The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: HoodWitch by Faylita Hicks

Undercover, the triggers
of chalk-dusted goons tripped
on the local game of niggas
they was hunting. Caught
everybody off guard.
And these fools thought
it was all just gonna go away.
They canceled the TV crews
& the coroners & the internal
investigations. Told everyone:
Just go home. It’s over. But it
wasn’t over. It’s never over. It
got the traumatized & taunted—
aunties/mamas/grandmamas—
to congress over they forgotten
& call down they ancestors.
Summon up the rooted. Go live.
And boo: They. was. not. ready.

Moon-eaters swarm & hum
under the fluorescent trick
of the busted streetlight
over on Fifth. Swell & flood out
the alley. All of them, hooded
spooks on howl. Apparitions
of chopped tar-dipped diamonds
grinning cement teeth. Their faces
beat jigsaw, their bodies slick
as graffiti—they’ve come back
to get what they’re owed.

B b L l A a C c K k acid bleeding
all over the streets, they drippin’
coagulated cayenne like they is
those girls. Just girls before
the nick & chomp; before the city caught
they bodies; before the city slipped into
they bodies, but now—they flares
of mauve light, rockin’ inflamed chests
& split cherry tongues; they swollen throats
full of fire. They eyes on hot
like ruptured dwarf stars.

Before they were graffiti,
they were boys. Before steel hymns
whispered holes into them,
they were boys. Just boys
before the chop & flip;
before they were separated
bone from rib; before the city
got under they skin for good,
they was boys—but now, they jugs
full of lightning—swirling summer
storms in their smoke-infused cheeks,
pushing havoc up through they filtered lungs
& out through they Gucci pursed lips;
they air colliding with scripture
like Molotov cocktails & brick walls.