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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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The Other Woman

Rotten stem of a girl. Snakes
for brains. I once was a siren
wrapped in garbage. No,

I was the garbage. I made a game
out of ruining: if I let
a spaghetti strap slip off

my shoulder, swirled my tongue
around a glass’s salted rim,
and unhinged the jaw

of my want, I could swallow
entire lives, how a woman pinned
all her happiness in the soft

heaven of her love’s beard.
I enjoyed hurting the women
I didn’t know, enjoyed knowing

my pile of flesh and grunts
could snatch the attention
of men away from the women

who called them home. Like
the woman who called
and called while the phone went

to voicemail, while I conjured
shivers up and down her beloved’s
muscled calves. I was good

at slithering and bad at sitting still.
I’m sorry. I didn’t understand loving
yet, didn’t know love could be bread

and blood, sugar and sky. Now I wait
for the other woman to arrive
and make a snack out of my joy.

I am waiting for her to
chew my sinew, to clean my bones
bare and teach me despair.

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Rogue

In second grade, Kendra, the storybook
blonde girl from the manicured subdivision

who took singing lessons, said to me, quiet
and cruel, in the closet with cubbies

we kept backpacks and coats in, that I was
weird. Her eyes squinted when she said it,

like she was trying to pinpoint the exact freckle
or tremor or Kmart crewneck that contained

my weirdness. Jenny with the light brown
pixie said I stared out the window

too much. And my teacher told my mother
I never spoke in class, wouldn’t volunteer

to read aloud, though I could read.
And they were all correct about me,

I feared, as I spent recesses playing
make-believe with myself, Frankenstein’s

monster roaming the playground, searching
for my promised companion. Some days

I was plagued by diseases the babysitter told me
she wanted to cure—Dimondale Elementary’s

first Ebola victim transversing the monkey bars
at record speed, blood dripping from my eyes.

Saturday mornings I would wake early
and start the coffee for my comatose parents,

curl up on the couch next to my big brother,
who I suspected was weird, too, and escape

into cartoons. My favorite was X-Men
because the mutants got to be heroes

for their weirdness. My hero
was Rogue, who was untouchable.

If you touched her skin, she absorbed
your life force. I never liked it

when grown-ups hugged me. I knew
it was dangerous to get too close,

that it was best to keep your gloves on
if you didn’t want anyone to get hurt.

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