How My Brother Pronounces Home
He says, “I’m sick of all the breaths I’ve lost in my lungs, I’m sick of water letting me drown in it.” then, I recover how he covers himself in his skin, how he wishes his home, is not a burnt skin.
Strange Fall Fruit
Children playing before and / parents within suburban homes / know not or speak not of history, / but just add more candy to the dish / more laughter at the hanging ghosts.
You Almost Cursed God
Because God — the most wise, most just — painted you Black. You are in need, / Like someone suffering from hyperglycemia, of insulins concocted with fierce reasons to live
On Learning That Malcolm X, as a Young Man, Cased and Robbed the Home of My Relative in a Boston Suburb
and what are possessions anyway / when his father died crushed by a streetcar / and he was convinced the Klan was involved / somehow
Finding Home
Before we became the songs we had refused to hear / Before our blossoms became the diaspora dance, now alien to us / Before our souls finally leave the home we carry
Dear Editor,
I’m wondering if you ever reflect on your social position, function, and corresponding / duty? I do. I reflect on it all the time, here on the other side of your opinions, / peckings, and ideas.
A Lullaby for Home
The floating white fire in the night sky dims / An outline looms, is golden-hewn / Across the crag, beyond the clouds / Our home seen in the horizon
just another foreigner
mandarin in the metro station / spanish when grandma calls / que inteligente son mis chinitos / american when my british friends / call it football / i stop calling it soccer, too
Mushrooms in Mint, or On love (Ixix)
mushrooms that first appeared / in my mint patch day after you passed / orange on green yesterday / white on green today
The Giraffe Titan
If you were to tremble at just / the mention of such crazed desire / not content until Africa / was consumed down to mere pebbles, / I could not blame you. However, / do know I tell you these horrors / alongside the bones showcased here
Another Celebration
Befo’ dey took me to da bridge, I say, / Dat white girl dere, she happy as can be! / They didn’t let me turn around to check. / The trial was the noose around my neck.
black butterfly
though tourist maps will scrub the areas in gray. Invisible? / No gift shops where the cops go rogue in episodes of Homicide. / No iridescence.
Losing the Zero
Swaying back and forth, like a flag for the nation of our trauma / Back and forth, beyond the negatives or positives / Fumbling, dropping, spilling / You lose the zero in so many ways
I’ve Kept You Alive
We walk to my house which is big and made of glass like a greenhouse of plants. / You do not use the door but squeeze in-between the wall and the floor, / then crawl into the living room. There’s no telling your limits.
Homage to My Peruvian Brother
What fault do I have in wanting to know today the person/who no longer exists?/In wanting to know how many barefoot kids/were in the school,/How many elderly remained/sitting in the walkway,/How many sisters sell in that spot/that which matters to no one anyway
the Decolonial Passage 