Hey

That lanky smile on your face

Neatly fold it, then

Squeeze it underneath your father’s pillow

Call his woes a bridge to your next orbit

Foot, taste on them before his night turns grey

Allow him to speak

More than you will ever listen

 

White faces

White fences

White concoctions

White intentions gawking

White finds home in the black sand too

 

How come everyone speaks of the runaways

Soft feet, textured in the grieves that beholden

A spade to call one’s own

Humbled knees assembling to abide

Nourish your mind

With the memories of your lust

Marinate their thoughts

With all the shades of your being

Then exit

And watch every door fall behind you

 

Your mother

You hear her speak

Even when she lies asleep in her bed

She’s only your mother because she birthed you

Screeching to the end of the rope she holds onto

She too is a fish

Rotating in the same social bowl

Born of grief

Passed on from hand to hand

 

They don’t write books about women like her

The ones who gather wood

And lit their fires

The demure peacocks

Stripped off of every feather

Too too broken

But still stretches their womb for men

 

And this woman who fathers you now

She is home for no one

Except for herself only

Dressed by absence

Standing in for the excluded middle

 

Barbwire tongue

Flickering eyes, no slippers left to throw at you

She looks at your life

And goes into conversation with herself again

Tell me, which part of hers is your tail

And which of his are your wings

 

Black voices

Black impulses

Black fences falling apart

Black rivers turning utterly silent

Black is free only as long as he gallops

Black stoops too short, she bleeds again

 

Who is to be blamed for this rusting

This forever newness wavering in the distance

One too cold to have missed out on living free

When the children wake up again, they’ll trudge

Ask which side they’ll stand between our fences

 

Must we say

We’ve been ambushed by our wounds

Must we say we didn’t see this coming

Must we say we didn’t see the river rising

Must we say we didn’t see the border dissolving

Must we