Read the Receipts
Not a nod to the lives whittled down/to sugar crystals, fingers that twisted/free each cotton boll 200,000/to make a bale. No mention/of ships funneling millions of/Africans to plantations far from/the cool green of Hadley/How the steel-blue Atlantic/laps against the unspoken/shores of our story.
Mammy Does the Morning Chores
And after breakfast, when your apron and head rag/Have been disheveled by batter and sweat/And your hunger and senses have been tempted to partake/But you must always wait, they order you still for more;
song for mashombela
but I want to drink/ from mphahlele’s/well of knowledge/tiptoe/behind the immortal lamps/of biko & sankara
How to Love Your Hair
When my dad delivered me/The first thing he saw/Was a thicket of black hair/Sticking out straight and wet/Like fur on a freshly licked kitten/It took a few months to curl into itself.
At Monticello
My feet can hardly resist dancing/but I, who worked all day butchering/plucking feathers from ducks, cleaning/vegetables, sweating at caldrons hung/over the hot fireplace must now wash dishes
Howlin’ Wolf’s Harp
He licked the harmonica only because he had to/spend the rest of his time swallowing the gristle/of separate but equal, and all the things awful/about the South–and North; no safe haven then/(& now);
Southern Report From Amy Jacques Garvey
Rubbing my finger against the barrel of the gun/you swore you’d never use, even after Tyler’s/bullet grazed your forehead. “No gun for me/If I am to be killed, then maybe it is my destiny,”/I was greeted by a host of nervous congregants.
Climbing Walls
Upper new York bay. uncle describes. he drives cab. knows all 50 states. he/says they are really 50 different countries. but one hate for dirt people/he’s supposed to pick me up. at drop spot.
Domino Effect
Tami Sawyer/Made loud, sufficient noise/In her hometown of Memphis/In marshalling together youth & elders/In removing the toxicity of ages.
Certify This Land
Tell me protest fields will halt to morph into abattoirs every time/we demand for a sunny life, for a right to inhale and exhale, every night we want to resurrect strangled justice from its grave.
Netela
Crossing the stage, diploma in hand, sole flapping loose from the plastic heels/my mother shipped to me for thirty dollars more than what they cost/lipstickless mouth unmasked for the livestream/my parents were watching nine thousand miles away
Coming to America
we don’t speak English/the taxi driver takes us/to the wrong town/the teacher/gives me a new name/which I hate
Where I Am From
Where I am from, we count nights and not days/by day, we become one with the forest to evade bullets/and by night we search for the biggest holes to conceal our bodies.
In Case of Fire
In case of capture/this poem is reversible/Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote a novel/on sheets of prison toilet paper/The blank side of this page/is suitable for ink, or similar markers/Improvise as needed/and good luck to you.
At Heaven’s Anteroom
There/At the anteroom of heaven/The land of the Free/The wealthy kingdom beyond those mountains afar/May the eyes that see you want you/May they smile in adoration/By how handsome a soul you are.
the Decolonial Passage 