SEE ALL TAGS & MOODS
Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka!
Shots rang out on my street today
Three Black yoots lay dead
shot inna dem head
Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand.
We were so small, but I wanted to know
how it felt: my hand raised high across
the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze.
…
let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are
i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us
the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured
I.
It’s the season of wine, meadows, and Rose
The court of spring is cleared of choughs and crows
Generous clouds now water Rey[1] more freely than Khotan[2]
The little girl is innocent
they’ve put henna on her hands
they’ve plaited her hair beautifully
they’ve put kohl round her eyes
they’ve dyed her eyebrows
We’re driving and the radio says mass marine extinctions within a
generation. No silence, no sirens — an unflustered inflection, then
stock markets, cryptic as Latin mass. I force myself: the interval
The ancestors of everyone I’ve let into my body
are gathered in a small room with one window,
no lights. Yes, the room is crowded. Yes, there
are no chairs. Yes, they are talking. Why are we
The hallway is an empty
riverbed, smooth and barren.
At three o’clock classroom
doors open like dams.
Gullies of teens stream
out, to become one
Do you remember, Nancy,
when we sat in the Creole restaurant
and glanced up at the television to see students running
with their hands in the air and photographs
of two young men?
My sister is crying and crying
her tears grow to salt stormy showers
to rain and to rapids and rivers
they run to the sea to the sea.
My sister sobs softly she knows
You gasp, awakened by
a bucket of cold water.
A gauzy autumn morning. A drained sunrise.
You shiver, strain to see the house
parent’s fingers whipping & flicking in
“The link with poverty is there is there in the man's hat, too, for money has got to be brought in, got to be brought in somehow,” M.D., The Lover.
Your mother is missing,
the nurse hovers at the door .
Your mother is missing, a bit louder this time.
As if this was natural, a daily game of let's find the Italian,
Hands pressed to glass
had a dozen foster parents
tell me to run from my mother’s truth
I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his thumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before morning
The puck skates in on parted-snow ice.
It's the season’s last game, an encore
to stomach winter’s sliver, to shrug off
the townsfolk stares.
The moonlit night is advanced in years
Scrape the inside of sleep the belly wall
tasting like yoghurt cooked broccoli
its emptiness leaving something
on the tongue. Escaping the body
that wants to quit from the inside.
It was in a boardroom
that I witnessed the latest killing
A room filled with knowledgeable
white people
trying to understand
what we offer
shaking their heads
The night America took off her mask
we slept together poorly. I'd woken up early
that Tuesday, dragged myself to a gymnasium
in Jersey City to cast my vote into the void.
Day thirty-nine
The thing that death gave you —
your face leaks
your face overflows
Your face is the grave of your nose
your face is the grave of your ears
When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car
the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.
I use the past tense though this is irrelevant
in Daniel's language, which is sign.
big ghosts contra
band my diction war
korea's north sees red as
america flags china's chopped limb
british crowns hong kong
cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist
Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God, he said. O God.
i ask mama
about residential school
she says no
i ask her again
the third time
i stop listen
to her silence
the animal in me
is constant.
thirst starts,
hunger answers.
sleep is uncertain,
restless limbs.
in the night,
I hear footsteps.
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
Should lanterns shine, the holy face,
Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,
Would wither up, an any boy of love
If I am judged
If I am punished
If I am dismissed
If I am misunderstood
If I am celebrated
If I am envied
If I am competed with
If I am slandered against
If I am seen
before i start i want to say you shouldn’t blame yourself
there’s no point in beating around the bush
there’s something we need to talk about
this is the most difficult thing i’ve ever had to tell anyone
There’s a joke that ends with — huh?
It’s the bomb saying here is your father.
Now here is your father inside
your lungs. Look how lighter
the earth is — afterward.
side a:
1. 18 and Life
her friend takes her to
yesterday at the Oakland zoo
I was walking alone for a moment
past the enclosure holding the sun bear
We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James,
who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the
Cévennes
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
What horror to awake at night
and in the dimness see the light.
It was down that road he brought me, still
in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,
but it did feel expected. The way you…
The snake can separate itself
from its shadow, move on ribbons of light,
taste the air, the morning and the evening,
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
Hello, listen, I’m on a field phone, do not speak until I say “over.”
Repeat, don’t talk until I say “over.” Over. Do you understand,
For everyone
The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,
But many at that moment will not say
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,
A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
