Pick Up Your Feelings (after Jazmine Sullivan)
Playlist by Aricka ForemanHonestly, I’m tired. I’m Black and Woman and Queer, and this country is a mess. But these poems by these poets hold the Annie Lee painting “Blue Monday” in me, and a person who can persist—look at my life and ask questions: who do I love, what is my salve, who keeps me dreaming? And, these poets never shirk the past, but lay it out so we know “this has been, and it’s doneness is a myth, so what new-new you got?” I’m ever grateful for their sharp inquiry, their beauty, and ultimately their call to rise. Yes, there's a fight. And there’s something more to fight for: this living thing. When Lorde said. When Morrison said. When Baldwin said. When Hurston said. When Kitt said. We call back. Listen.
The Check In
They call. They message.
Then the occasional tag on social media. I am wanting to check in on you… We are thinking of you… I am so so sorry…
Then there I go again pounding my head sifting through thick air scattering names on a dusty floor
It is morning. It is the afternoon, maybe the middle of some God-awful hour. I was
calm. I was hunkered low, shades drawn maybe sipping a tea.
No one should see me pacing kitchen
to porch
to bedroom
grabbing at lint or shaking my wrist in the mirror.
Don’t call don’t remind me there are soldiers
tramping on my lawn with gas and pepper spray. I’ve just laid the sheets tight in my bed. I’ve just trimmed the plants. And you are so white and fragile with your checking. You are so late so late so late.
Abortion in the Garden of Eden
Deep in the heart of the Garden of Eden, past the Euphrates & Tigris riverbanks, the marsh grass, reed beds, bulrushes, the rough-leafed black mulberry's sweet purple fruit, the sour pomegranate's brief bloom, the pistachio split open to green tart flesh, the date palm's intoxicating wine, its meaty drupe, twilight's first meal breaking fast for Ramadan, its fanned leaves laid across the Way of Suffering at the soles of Jesus' feet, past the olive's anointing oil, burnt offering in holy temples, its opulent branches crowning victors of wars, the remnants sealed 3000 years in Tutankhamen's tomb, past citric lime's aromatic pulp, the fig's feminine flower, the pubescent apricot akin to the peach, its erogenous nectar, healing stone, past clusters of grapes violently lush, mellowing on overcrowded vines, sugary cinnamon artlessly hewn from the bark of evergreens, past Aphrodite's succulent quince, bewitching to Atalanta whose sworn virginity to Artemis was felled by the tempting pome, past stiff-necked tulips, night-blooming jasmines, blood-stained hyacinths, deep-rooted camel thorns, willows in the rivers' midst, the Tree of Life vowing immortality, past the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, condemning womankind, stands a wild row
of herbal shrubs eclipsing shady corners of a disillusioned paradise, bastard hellebore brewed by witches to summon forth demons or blood, cures hysterics, women screaming, running naked through the streets, common rue Herb-of-Grace constricts the womb, birthwort for snakebite, seeds contraceptive, tea leaves purge the embryo, bitter waters fed to a pregnant wife testing infidelity, branded adulteress, disavowed if she miscarries--that if Eve had not eaten the fateful apple she never would have known--what knuckleheads Cain & Abel, how demanding raising civilization can be, how the curse of painful labor proves God's vengeance is exacting, how envy drives the hearts of men to murder!
there is no flash
the eyes fine tuned perhaps
consciously a first time offense
to focus on cliché heaven
a great white trope: the white light
the first time I nearly died
I reached too towards imaginary white
lands of white hands draped in white robes white rings glowing above white heads
instead I forced my niece to enter my mind her first
word light an opened fist of light mouthed
see the light see the light see the light
some midnight season of new moons an annihilation
of the obscenity of the bright white flesh
of a glistening cold moon poking through the night
my father says show me the poet
who knows absolute darkness is the light
my niece sings this little light of mine & points in the darkness
this little light see the light of mine I’m gonna let see the light
friends there is no light at the end
only hunger muted & sharp blinding rage
of the mind’s kaleidoscopic emptiness oh it is blindingly white
Taking Out the Trash
Someone else used to do this before. Someone responsible, someone who loved me enough to protect me from my own filth piling up.
But I’m over 40 now & live alone, & if I don’t remember it's Thursday & rise with the cardinals & bluejays calling up the sun, I’m stuck with what’s left rotting for another week.
I swing my legs like anchors over the side of the bed & use the wall for leverage to stand, shuffle to the bathroom. In summer, I slide into a pair of shorts & flip flops, wandering room to room to collect what no longer serves me.
I shimmy the large kitchen bag from the steel canister, careful not to spill what’s inside or rip it somehow & gross myself out. Sometimes I double bag for insurance, tying loose ends together, cinching it tightly for the journey.
Still combing through webs of dreams, of spiders’ handiwork glistening above the wheeled container on the back patio, I drag my refuse down the driveway past the chrysanthemums & azaleas, the huge Magnolia tree shading the living room from Georgia’s heat, flattening hordes of unsuspecting ants in my path to park it next to the mailbox for merciful elves to take off my hands.
It is not lost on me that one day someone responsible, someone who loves me enough will dispose of this worn, wrinkled container after my spirit soars on.
I don’t wait to say thank you to those doing this grueling, necessary work. But I do stand in the young, faintly lit air for a long moment to inhale deeply, & like clockwork when he strides by, watch the jogger’s strong, wet back fade over the slight rise of the road.
on empathy
what it sounds like is a bird breaking small bones against glass. the least of them, a sparrow, of course. you’re about to serve dinner and this is the scene. blame the bird, the impertinent windows, try not to think of the inconvenience of blood splattering violet in the dusk. how can you eat after this? do not think of whom to blame when the least of us hurdles into the next moment. a pane opening into another. the least of us spoiling your meal.
~
the smell of it will be smoke and rank. you will mutter about this for days, the injustice of splatter on your window. foolish bird. civilization. house with the view. fucking bird feeder. it will take you a week, while the flesh starts to rot under thinning feathers, while the blood has congealed and stuck, for you to realize that no one is coming to take the body. it is your dead bird. it is your glass. you have options you think. hire out. move out. leave it for the bigger blacker birds.
~
you will taste rotting just above the top of your tongue. so much, that you check yourself to make sure that it is not you. the bird deserves something. you go to the closet, pick out a shoe box. discount? designer? you start to think of how it has come to this: pondering your mortality through a bird. a dead bird. never-mind. you don’t find it a problem not running into windows.
~
it is an eyesore and we start to gather as large billows in your yard. you marvel at us, beautiful, collecting and loosening our dark bodies from white sky to your grass. and then it comes. more bones and blood. one by one crashing into the closed pane. mindless birds. brown and gray feathers. filthy pests. another. fucking feeder. we look like billions lifting into flight and then—shatter.
~
you might find a delicate humility in the art of cleaning glass. while you work, you sustain tiny slivers of opened flesh. tips of your fingers sing. shards, carnage, it has become too much. you are careful to pick up all that you can see. you call a repairman. you are careful to pick up all that you can see. you throw everything into big shiny trash bags. you are careful to pick up all that you can see. you consider french doors. you are careful to pick up all that you can see and find more with each barefoot trip through your bloodbath house.
Spontaneous Repulsion
Than us, who better to catalog our failures? Having been inside each
at the same time, grounded by eating overripe figs. Thanking the table’s
barrier, asking aloud for coffee. Close call to feeling. A monophony of coyotes:
This one brave as hell, struttin in here all over ripe. Braved
coming into here hell. My sickly smell. Pull the corner store still frame by
its grubby edges: our flower dress mid-thigh, waist beads showing through
loosened buttonholes. The aroused hum of such hungry hours.
Or, because of our growing into mother’s face (of us, who’s not inclined?)
so asked some days to name a child, theoretically. “Who but Chi knows
tomorrow?” The name we’d give. An alright bet. But the body barks back
constantly–dark elbows, barbelled nipples clanking the plexiglass display:
Swisher Sweet, a bamboo BITCH, skin lightening cream. Nothing cares to hold
past one long maybe. Envision mother in our self, in the whirl, holding back:
the days we bit our lip in glee, when ma’s hands hovered over, our childish
heads never still. Ma’s hand pulling the plait too hard, initiating our apart