out of her pork-rind dress. i crawl out of myself

into myself, take refuge where i flee.

once, i snatched my heart out like a track

& found not a heart, but two girls forever

playing slide on a porch in my chest.

who knows how they keep count

they could be a single girl doubled

& joined at the hands. i’m stalling.

i want to say something without saying it

but there’s no time. i’m waiting for a few folks

i love dearly to die so i can be myself.

please don’t make me say who.

bitch, the garments i’d buy if my baby

wasn’t alive. if they woke up at their wake

they might not recognize that woman

in the front making all that noise.

the fat one with the switch

stare so long they gotta growl

faggot to justify it. f-sounds

an excuse to bite they lips

the t-word just to taste.

dicks hard as consonants in dickies.

question-mark thick, you fuck they head up.

damn any desire that sneaks you into laundry rooms

& strikes you in the street out of fear of itself.

they disrupt themselves with your body

& call it your fault, bury you in night

but dark is cheap dirt. temporary earth.

with the sun comes the news of you.

another.

another.

i wanted to write an ode. it still could be.

but first, some silence for the girls

hurried into after ’cause some dude

felt his blood rush on sight

& it was the first time he knew he had blood.

not even the razor taught him that

not his daughter’s birth

not his clotted mammy

not Christ. just like a man.

he saw God

& instinct told him kill it.

my poems

my poems are fed up & getting violent.

i whisper to them tender tender bridge bridge but they say bitch ain’t no time, make me a weapon!

i hold a poem to a judge’s neck until he’s not a judge anymore.

i tuck a poem next to my dick, sneak it on the plane.

a poem goes off in the capitol, i raise a glass in unison.

i mail a poem to 3/4ths of the senate, they choke off the scent.

my mentor said once a poem can be whatever you want it to be.

so i bury the poem in the river & the body in the fire.

i poem a nazi i went to college with in the jaw until his face hangs a bone tambourine.

i poem ten police a day.

i poem the mayor with my bare hands.

i poem the hands off the men who did what they know they did.

i poem a racist woman into a whistle & feel only a little bad.

i poem the president on live TV, his head raised above my head, i say Baldwin said.

i call my loves & ask for their lists.

i poem them all. i poem them all with a grin, bitch.