I stood on turf green grasses
Covering your graves; 
I felt the earth tremble and shake.

I lingered stoic beside the dove-white crosses 
Marking your graves
as if in an eteranal salute.

I gazed upon the 
funeral-white roses 
that lined 
the stark cold stone memorial.
I heard 
The broken sobs
Of
    your dads, 
    your moms,
    your wives 
    your children
As they read THE telegraphs. 

I occupied the bunkers
for a few moments–
smelled black battle smoke acidy  
Mingling with red hot young blood spills.

I stared out over your black cliffs
To see 
Rust-red chunks of warships
Half-submerged 
in ocean’s waters.

I listened 
To gentle waves 
Lap unto the whiskey-colored sand beach
Leaving Champage sparkling bubbles
reflecting bright, and clear
under cold sun rays.

I listened to the soft kissing 
Of the waves 
Against the rust red chucks 
Of warships–
Taking nothing–leaving nothing–
Perhaps ……….
The red rust
Holds behind it
Crimson stains
Never to be 
Washed away.

I felt myself weeping. 

Through the forest I have gone
I made a crown out of yellow flowers
I am Black royalty like my ancestors
I fall against a body of water
Running my hands through the waves
I am my Black ancestors who swam
Powerful, holy, and Black against the blue
The sun beats down on my back, we are
more alike than they ever taught us
I rest against the bank
In deep sleep I dream of freedom
I hear the drums beating again, and again
And when I wake, I dance
When I wake, I dance
Capitalism, grind culture tries to hold me down
strings and shackles around my ankles
But I do fear no more
I have the keys
I breathe
It smells like summer
                like libration

I love my mint green mug
Yet I love neither mint tea nor tea that tastes too much like tea

I love my men
Yet I love neither patriarchy nor men who wield masculinity as a weapon

I love peanut butter and chocolate
Yet I love neither colonialism nor oppressive labor practices

I love sliding between crisp sheets at night
Yet I love neither washing those sheets nor wrestling them onto my bed

No dead fish
                        am I
Hanging empty
                        in the maw
No Jonah case
                        Have I been
refusing medley
                        swallowed whole

nothing else 
                        I am
but this
                        the current

My new beauty is pale green.
Or I think I saw the walls were.
That soft hue, the shade of
crushed eucalyptus
diluted with mint.
Let’s make a candle of this
moment and burn it until
our eyes water, the color
of sea. The color of deep
rain. Yesterday, I met a cat
I did not know. I wasn’t sure
of her until she ran her full
body into me, crashed into
my leg like a wave. Like a
shipwreck. And when we got
free, she turned over on her
tummy and I was impaled
by the pierce of her pale
green eyes, a trident against
the dusk blue smoke of her
fur, lightest at the bottom.
What a flash of color for
anyone watching this fire fall
from gravity. Ash rising.
I’ve cut through water
just to be here. Slices
of ocean, of river
like rocks all around me.
The current keeps crashing.
My hands wet with the endless
liquid inside me as I open them
to ask again for forgiveness,
for beauty, even as I turn
toward the sea.

Energy flows, sparking
Creativity and determination.
Surely, this time, I will
Stick with it,
Riding the waves and the
Ripples until arriving at the
Quiet water just before the

       W
           A
              T
                 E
                    R
                        F
                          A
                              L
                                 L

                                      Plunging not to
                                      My death, but being
                                      Churned and pummeled
                                      Until once again
                                      Reaching a place of

                                        C      A      L      M  

I am an essay
chock full of little red lines
hilighting my errors,
underlining the mistakes
and even criticizing my best points.

Intro
Body
Body
Body
Bodybodybodybodybody

Dysmorphia

I am a grade at the top right of a page,
always measuring
never measuring up,
constantly looking for percentages
and congratulatory approval
“great job, A+”
and only finding binary,
lifeless code behind my eyes
telling me two different versions
of the same truthlie:
010111010000

0000000000000

0

0

0

“binary thought”
one or zero
black or white
left or right 
no two ways about it
but only two ways to see it
pass or fail
but it never mattered
because it was all in red
the whole time

In my head, there are two voices:
one telling me to do it
one whispering don’t
as if I ever had a choice in the matter.

My margins are filled with error
and my margin of error
is unforgiving at best. 

I crumple the page to start again,
hold down the backspace key,
and wonder if this time,
maybe,

My words won’t be cut
and my arms and legs won’t be
chock full of little red lines
marking places where perfection should be 
and instead
is only failure.

We all have our habits.
Sometimes it’s an addiction;
sometimes a person.

I think there will always be a trace
of you in this bar
found in the rainbow squiggles
added to many of the surfaces,
from the cornhole boards
to decorated coasters taped to the wall,
and most prominently, a bar stool
with all of our names
worked into the beautiful madness of your mind.

I remember sitting in notebooks and poems
on the patio with you, that bar stool,
and your chameleon markers.
We processed life in random lines,
occasionally breaking silence
when art was not enough.
My oppressive new job, your possessive boyfriend.
Those days when it was just us
were in curious ways the best
because you would allow yourself to cry.

You were at war.
I committed myself
to marching beside you
to helping you shatter his influence.

I remember your birthday.
When I tell that story to others,
I’m blindsided by the *chocolate* you shared,
the sudden hour-long tingling stare into the parking lot,
but truthfully,
I knew exactly what you had offered. 
Deep down, I recognize
such an extreme break in character
could only have been facilitated by you.

I had hoped
we would do that more.
Nights to sit and vibe.
There was potential.

No one else here knows about these feelings,
though I’ve often pondered sharing
then since and now. 
We all knew where you were at.
I was content letting you rediscover yourself
free of him.

Problem was
you lost every sense of you were when you were with him
which made it terrifying to try to be anything without him
including yourself.

Months since I last saw you
I guess no news is good news.
If you’re happy and content
then I hope the miracle never spoils.

But I may always think about you, wondering
should I have revealed more of myself to you?
every time my eyes fall
upon that doodled-on barstool.

She’s here
With me
I know that we are meant to be
But I want
And I need to
Know that this is certainty
Cause I have feeling that there’s someone else out there
Like the girl staring at me
I walk by her
Can she tell that I can’t breathe
Cause I am stuck
Glued like a fly
But there really is no reason why
Cause she’s the reason there are tears on this letter
That’s why I’m leaving in my brand new car
Cause I can’t bear another day
Where I walk alone on my own way

pressed against the forehead of night     
purring in their own language,      
a system I couldn’t crack.    
Dusk with its desperate colors of erasure,       
battered blue, wine-flushed.    
The wind whispers a secret     
to the long-haired maples,    
something dark and puzzling.     
Squirrels in the live oaks
and wingbeats shuddering the treetops    
become a kind of song      
that swims up out of the past.       

In spite of everything, the stars     
shimmer in the distance;     
the moon comes out to stare,   
stark, unsettling.     
Fireflies pulse in the woods       
like a heart beating
to the rhythm of      
We are here, yes, we are still here.  

There is a brief, startling moment   
when I fly out of myself,  
forget the impossible weight of being human,  
become a thick black fist    
tilting on one wing,   
knowing the sweet kinship of rising,    
unraveling the sky.                

All night I hear voices 
clear as a country lake, pure, bottomless:
Listen, this song is for you.
Try to remember    
you are a descendant of    
the whirling cosmos and water.
At a crossroads, I meet the dead,   
the old griefs harbored in my chest   
ike a thick chunk of fat.     
I feel homesick waves.  

Poured out like a bucket of wild berries,  
I come back to my body,   
willing to remember  
I am becoming a holy place,     
wreathing myself in the living fire.
I want to taste the sweetness,     
unfold into a world of reverie,   
feasting on darkness but needing light,    
slowly curling myself back into
a vessel of tenderness
traveling toward incandescence.    

*Cento of lines/phrases from Edward Hirsch’s collection Living Fire