You can always find a few discarded like condoms

by their parents who maybe got caught up in somethin’

they didn’t know how to get out of and you,

you just along for the ride.

Like Tyronne, Baby Ruth and Chantel, my homies

we just going, well, that’s my moms, that’s my pops.

We don’t make excuses, I mean I didn’t.

Now I’m the kind of woman she would have been,

made for friendship, not sex,

with my flat ass, my flat chest

and a big mouth

that gets me in trouble

I can always get out of,

’cause I’m smart

and know how to start something and finish it.

See me “rope a dope” around the coke, the “herine,”

the mainline to nowhere.

Honey, I been there

and I’m not going back,

not even to get my mother’s body.

THE GREENWOOD CYCLE

after the events surrounding the Tulsa Riots

1. CONJURE

I thought I was dreaming,

when I saw the sky fulla black smoke,

but I wasn’t, no, ’cause I pinched myself

and it hurt

and I knew we were gonna suffer

for somebody’s sinfulness.

“Just like Jesus,” you said, Mama,

when you screamed,

“Run, daughter, run,

white men are comin’, they got guns.”

I said, “I see ’em, Mama, I see,

they ridin’ up and down the street

throwin’ torches on rooftops, on porches,

on the poor Negro trying to pray

while the flames eat him up

they so hungry.

Mama, we can’t get away.”

“Run on, daughter,” you cried, “hide if you can

from the white devil,”

but he wasn’t no devil, he was a man

and he was evil, yes, he was,

but he wasn’t supernatural,

he didn’t have no power to conjure like I do,

when I conjure you,

crying, “Don’t look back, or you’ll turn to ashes

and fall down among the dead in Greenwood.”

Now I’m alone

and I don’t say nothing ’bout it to nobody,

just fix me a hot toddy

and sit rocking in my rocker

and think about you, Mama,

turned to dust

wrapped in a dirty sheet

with a body lying on top.

“It ain’t Christian, is it,” you whisper,

“to be murdered like this and just forgot?”

I rock in time

to the ticktock of the grandfather clock

you dragged from the burning house,

because it was your daddy’s,

give to him by the old master

when your daddy got freedom.

For some reason, it didn’t burn up

just charred a bit,

a piece of wood pried off it.

When I got up the money,

I went and bought it off the junkman,

who thought it was worth something.

It was, but only to me,

rusted, permanently stopped

at the hour and the minute

that cost me you.

2. SANCTUARY

“Is the world on fire?”

—Sister of Mr. Beard, survivor

I said, “Brother, the world’s on fire.”

He said, “Liar,”

but Daddy said, “Y’all climb on up higher

in that tree so only God can see you,