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Half/Slice

I’ve tried to tear the Southern twang
from my throat, but
my American tongue is heavy meat

that can no longer fold
around the words
of my mother’s country.

Like Solomon’s babe,
I beg to be claimed.
Neither the East

nor the West
will speak for me:
“Call any land your home

but ours.”

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Kentucky Daydreams

my father first met my mother
down an earthen path
on the edges of songtan
we moved states every few years
after her death, running wherever
he thought he could build
a church and prosper, propelled by
his new wife, white, yes,
with a white son of her own
and the only one who didn’t match
was me

but it’s those brisk kentucky nights i think of
when i tell stories from my childhood,
of hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids
the luminescence of fireflies
smeared across our foreheads,
our cheeks, where i watched
meteor showers alone on the roof
and slept in the hammock outside
when the fighting downstairs
was too loud for dreaming

the fields beside our house were spun
into hay every autumn, and behind us
the deep wood full of caves where I could hide



and be my mother’s child again
imagining that the roots of the cedars
spread all the way to her grave in wawbeek
and that the water from the creeks i waded in
would find their way to the oceans
turn to steam
cradle us both in the clouds
and fall again
on the mountains of korea

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this poem

this poem assumes you’ll live a long life.
this poem assumes you’ll lose babies, sustain a level of detachment, wield a mouth,
       a potent mouth.

this poem assumes you aren’t like others—just here, idling and waiting.
this poem assumes people like you are taken out of the line, quizzed repeatedly.

this poem assumes the thousand beads around your waist are not of prayers, but
       droplets from home, water turning green in a bottle.
this poem assumes your regrets are of never eating enough.

this poem assumes you aren’t in danger.
this poem assumes you have more wisdom than to pick sides.

this poem assumes your loneliness comes from a room, all that burning and pining
this poem assumes you are a believer until you are pushed by stronger hands.

this poem assumes your success is an uptown apartment that barely allows
       twenty steps.

this poem assumes you only need friends who would point you out in a crowd,
none of that disdainful look at your locs, just love and pristine energy.

this poem assumes there are arms hugging the fright out of you.
this poem assumes home is anywhere that lets you keep your name.

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lesser crops

we’ve been told of old walls still standing,
of forms we assumed, as rebels, dreamers

like it’s some sin
waking from dreams, slowly at first, then aching.

in shame, there are things best kept to self,
secrets locked in our bones all these years,

the shape and texture of that on which we’ve fed
—meanings behind our parables of sustenance.

there is a yam crop served only to kings,
tended to with bent knees and rounded hoes,

rocking a ceremonial headgear
and with a hero’s face. yet it ran scarce

at the very point of need, leaving space
for the woman’s crop, like cassava, a thing less revered.

war being one of the world’s great ironies,
instances where quicker math becomes the norm,

like cassava and its long list of frying and mashing and endurance,
—a lesser crop raising the stakes,



stepping up, like a benevolent daughter
salvaging the burnt parts of a blessing,

learning to make what’s scarce wholly palatable,
to create munch from abominable protein.

such daughter, a pride in how she invents and cautions us,
to eat what we eat and not divorce sanity,

breakfast of reveries dipped in fermented sauce,
steamed cassava leaves for dinner,

while the remaining bits are kept for after it’s rained hard steel.
collective pride in how we all watch the sky,

learn when to kiss fully on the lips,
when to cite the hunger at home.

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wild

    there should be a heavy influence of music here, yell out loud when you catch the vibe

i get off the bus with my head high
settled curls on my head mark me as the shit

i threaten my roommates with prank calls
our surreal love stinks up the whole apartment

we laugh over a bowl of rice
daily bread our lord provides in empty calories

i shower and sing with Beethoven
behind, i renege on my claim to not gorge on these exotic things

i am stuck home and dealing
the bastards upstairs are playing cards and yelling gringo at intervals

after a long day, my mouth releases contracted Os
too tired of faking it, i only dive after unsaid words

there are some soiled laundries to do
thousands of expletives for people asking me to speak louder

i rinse and dry my tongue, a nightly routine
a clean tongue communes directly with the heart

i say a frightening prayer and name my hell
she masquerades as a small town swallowing soldiers



i fall asleep only to see my neighbors
in a dream shooting—attacking this peace i can afford

there is no rest here
we’ve come shaped by the hardship at home

when i say beat me and then release me
fear the wild that has found home in me

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the warlike

(i)

mother has always been a bull of a woman. never smiles.
she made friends but wasn’t keen on keeping them.

on evenings, she would sit out on the front porch,
gather her favorite impressions into a pile.

as if to test a sitting brew, the neighbors would pass, offer greetings,
small talk—the hiking price of kerosene, the recent ban on importation.

like she cared to look less busy; swatting at invisible flies, huffing
and puffing like a pressure cooker. she earned her stripes this way.

(ii)

when asked, i say mother carved me,
—a side stool—from her concrete ideas of others,

that i retained the twitch in my left eye,
borrowed scowl it took the others years to notice.

how i became this adept at interpreting burden—
the deadpan ones, the ones with a mind to run you over.

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singular voice as us

if I say I, I mean / a lot of people.
 — Victoria Adukwei Bulley

there are many of us, about & nearby
the ones you grew up with, the ones jumping off boats

               the ones you’ve held to your chest, in your arms
               once or twice, in death or rebirth

the ones saying the softer things
eyes small & tender, voices raspy, as if echoing remembrance

               the ones coming & going with awareness, pregenital & humbling
               exposing how conjoined we all are

when looked at, studied by the same face
in stories told by the enemy, our comparison to midnight hands

               though in reality, we are a chain gang
               intent on regeneration

—when one falls, the other digs
while one digs, the other prepares to seed

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Hotness

I want to write a slutty poem about how I am sweaty
and yearning for your body five state lines away,

how your cock is the only cock for me. I want to be
vulgar and loving. But I keep thinking about how

it’s been the three hottest days recorded in history
and this unairconditioned Vermont studio may be

the hotbox I die in. I want to believe in a higher
power, one that will shepherd the Earth

out of its burning, but I believe that humans
will extinguish ourselves and that the Earth will keep

turning through the galaxy without us and whatever
animals and plants and microorganisms survive us

will be better off. But that’s not true, not
entirely. The dogs will starve, so adapted to

serving us and being served by us. I am trying
to find some greater purpose in all our plunder

and all I can come up with is that dogs
would be lonely without us and there is something

innocent about staying alive for dogs—
there is nothing innocent in the way I want

you to pin me down, but maybe there is
something noble in the way I want the Earth to die

just a little slower to give you enough time.

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Manifesto of a Dormant Pansexual

My sexuality used to be a Lisa Frank folder
with a unicorn on it. Now it’s more of a KitchenAid

stand mixer, but I’ve got rainbows on my underpants
for nobody to see. My sexuality used to be

a wild, ravenous thing. Now it’s on a low-carb diet
and tries to get out and walk for ten thousand steps a day

but usually fails at it. My sexuality is married to
a sexuality. Facebook thinks my sexuality

is pictures of Emma Watson and Selena Gomez.
It’s true I slow down as I scroll through

their glam shots, but I’m more of a whiskey
and flannel fan. My sexuality misses coming out

to brunch, wants to order the sweetest
item on the menu—sweet grit cakes

and peach compote with whipped cream,
Yes, please! My sexuality keeps ordering

a yogurt parfait and coffee, something sensible.
My sexuality is a nice summer breeze

tousling my hair. My sexuality is I only shave
my pubes when a bathing suit is required.

My sexuality is a one-piece bathing suit,
has gotten shy with age, only wants one person

to see their midsection. My sexuality is often
covered up but has a rib tattoo you’ll never see.

My sexuality has never really liked porn.
My sexuality was once a pillow princess.

My sexuality is ambivalent about strap-ons
but is happy to split the check for dinner.

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Childless

A stranger’s pregnant belly
plops over elastic-waisted jeans,
and a wish kicks its legs
inside me. I wish it

would sit still.
Forest fires blaze
through Quebec, orange
smoke obscuring the sky

of the mid-Atlantic,
ushering in the new
normal: Tyger Tyger,
burning bright,

burning brush
and rushing through
subdivisions, making
ash out of loved lives.

Is delivering a child
into the smoldering of
the Anthropocene
an act of selfishness

or hope? Still, I want
to feel my breasts
milk-heavy,
like little wine bags.

When I hold
my friend’s tender
newborn, I pretend
she is my own—

journey out of her nursery
into the secret life
where I am a mother,
where the little spittle

on my shoulder
is my daughter’s
spittle, and therefore
made lovely. Her tiny fists

yank my loose hair
and pull me back
into the room
where I coo

and cuddle her
as her big eyes search
my face, saying nothing
of the coming dark.

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