Aiyana II

II

What happens when they
use your name
as a banner?

Will they look after Grandma?

Will they marry your mothers?

Protect your sisters?

Will they be there
in the middle of a
raid with a pistol?

Will they fire back
at the brutal police officer?

or

Will they use your name
as a banner?

Photo from Sun Times

Aiyana

 

How did your seven-year-old body
creep its way
into our collective consciousness?

Girls die everyday.

Black girls

But you force us to face
the questions we all fear.

What is the value of a
Black girl body?

Who prizes it? her?

How many Black bodies
will crumble
in front of badges?

How many more blues songs
for our girl-bodies?

Who, will protect us?

 

This begins my suite of poems around Aiyana Jones (I have 5 written with one more hatching in my heart). Ev (who posting a suite or series about her father) and I had a lil discussion about self-sabotage (see previous post), so I will try not to hold out from sharing my poems because they are unedited.  Feel free to workshop this one (and all other poems on the blog) fellow poets.

Newfoundland [Poem 4]

land bare, untilled soil
waiting for cow dung, water,
some place to call home

Evelyn is leading a Twitter bookclub on Toni Morrison’s A Mercy.  She’s also adding two poetry prompts per week based on the text.  Hard for me to post unedited work. Urgh. I just hate it.  Feel free to workshop it though.

Cozbi

And the name of the Midianite woman who was put to death was Cozbi daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a Midianite family. [Numbers 25:15 NIV]

COZBI

The scent of my father's house

sun

the way Zimri's eyes glittered

in the nightsky

water

mother's laughter

the girls

the patter of things

people, on the desert floor

all the festival food tastes


These I will miss.


These

I trespass across bloodlines

and surrender

for my love.

6 Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting.

7 When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand

8 and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman's stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped. [Numbers 25:6-8]

Senryu

My body palace

open to entertain your

uranium heart

                                    Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple 

 

Quick Tool to Discover if your Haiku is a Senryu

A great collection of haiku and senryu by Jara at Random Rhyme and Reason.

Antonio in the Kitchen

I stare numb at the wall
pale apricot
lingering behind his back
He's six feet of jelly
yet confident as our first day
he darts his tongue
into mine
his mouth, a cave
moist and hot like a
Brazilian jungle
new tongues
slippery and thick as
eel leather

Another re-post. This poem is about my first official kiss with my twelve-year-old boyfriend.

Muscle and Skin

little brown
round
discs
upon
a Herculean chest
my tongue
will
never
again
lick at
the hairs
measured
across
a sepia
stretch of
muscle and skin

Re-post.  The image is Picnic in the Grass...Alone by Faith Ringgold

Death Necklace

The wood-rotted shed open

halfway. You can smell

peach preserves hovering

atop a dead rat. Inside, the

green rake lies perpendicular

witness to the righteous slaughter.

Margaret with Priscilla

wound round her left side

the butcher knife in her right,

the look of a stunned owl.

Margaret Medea

like Abraham at Mt. Moriah

serves a God who barters

for one's desires

who craves

prostrating bodies,

burning flesh,

the cleanly carved

neck of an almost

slave girl.

Who among us

has the courage

Or the steady hand?

A poem about the place where Margaret Garner, a woman who freed her child from slavery through death.  This is the woman Toni Morrison featured in Beloved as Sethe. 


I'm slacking on the Tuesday poem posts so I went to this  poem as a repost. 

Fancy Talk

Honeymoon honeydew
put a spell on me
some Haitian vodun
some djembe
some sweet bare bones rhythm

Pour your dreams on my skin
illuminate me
with ya fancy
talk sweetsticky
talk
speak my
language

The recession has me flirting on Twitter. I was so delighted that Constant knew the difference between a senryu (loosely styled) and a haiku that I proposed to him.  We engaged in a brief Twitter romance (brief as in 10 minutes max).  His playfulness stroked my muse which brought you the poem above. Listen to it below (Subscribers- it's on the webpage).



Check out more music from Constant that inspired the context.

Strike Straight For Derrion Albert

They killed a Black boy.

Stomped him, face down. Black

boys of today no longer toy.

They killed a Black boy.

Erased his face, his Mama's joy,

told him ain't no coming back.

They killed a Black boy,

stomped him, face down, Black.


Listen to Strike Straight


 It's taken me a while, but I finally understand the triolet.  Evelyn Alfred has an ongoing Triolet Thursday.  She’s becoming an expert in the form. Subscribe to her feed for more treats. 
  
Do you know the  poem that gave me the inspiration for the title?

Sharing September 11

A poem inspired by my former college roommate. She was a right wing Republican. I was a spiritual member of the Lowndes County Freedom Party. We barely spoke to each other.

Faith in Numbers

Every morning

I pray to God

to win the lottery

 

Is it a prayer of truth?

of steadfast faith?

a wish to become

the steward of riches

 

the hope that my hand

full of green

will hold my future

 

God

no longer the authority

reduced to a big

round dial spinning

white balls popping

6 lucky numbers

Elegy of an Absent Father or To the Priestess Daughter

 

bring your laundry
when you come

between loads
I'll explain
    why I wasn't there
    what I should've done
    who I could have been

and celebrate how proud I am
of who you are
in spite of me

bring your laundry
when you come

wash my dirt away

Subconscious Competition

Subconscious Competition

He steps out a clawfoot tub
(the one I practiced drowning
him in for three months)

five years of water
dripping 
he greets my mother naked
and requests
my hand in marriage

then you appear
a Casperous apparition
chasing me through
courtyards and cobbled streets
telling me the choice is mine

I stop running
stare at you both
and walk away

What does it mean
when I dream you
in competition with my past?

Do you win?

Mind Racer

 

a ladybug salsas
on your index finger

I stare at this seamless merge,
nature, you
me cross-legged on the quad

I'm dazzled once again
by the contradiction
your bright brown eyes
the sadness that lurks behind them

I want to kiss you
but you're distant
busy running mental marathons

I'm here in front of you
ready

three years
too late

FRAGILE

we don't touch
don't kiss
no eyegazing

yet I'm fragile
as a
newborn dove

waiting for you

Inspector

like lapis beads

you inspect my layers

one by one

Haven

HAVEN

like a dandelion
like birds migrating south

like burying feet in white cool sand
like South African rain

like spring

you are refreshing
open
and inviting

Wasteland

line imprinted
above the brow

shrieks horrifically engraved
in cheekbones

one by one
our brethren
strewn open

their littered bodies
decorate the desert sand

This is home now
stench,
scrunched once-men
in liquid red pools

death and decay
the only things
we know for sure

Valentine's Day 2004

his body laid bare
on the twin bed
lengthwise against the window
naked,
starved,
bones and skin
like the Grand Canyon
he looked like some
swollen bellied kid
on a Feed the Children commercial
bright eyes
knowing
nobody will ever
pick up the phone
to dial/send food

nobody will ever
love his body
laid bare