he was still my nigga. when they turned his body

to dust he was still my dusty-ass boy.

don’t you hear it? the dust on the fan calls me

a bum, say my hairline looks like it’s thinking

about retirement. the dust in the car says i look

like a chubby slave, says i look too drunk, takes

my keys, drives me home. the wind is tangled

with the dust of the dead homies, carrying us over

to them, giggling in the mirror. hear them. hear

your long-gone girl tease your hair on the bus. hear them

rollin’ when you sweep the broom across the beaten floor.

i miss them. all the dead. how young. how silly

to miss what you will become. i apologize.

sometimes it just catches up in me. love

& ghost get caught up in us like wind & birds

trapped in a sheet just the same. & my friends

is some birds, is some chicken-head mofos

who i would legit stomp a nigga for, do you feel me?

when they buried my nigga i put on my Timbs

walked into that hot August tried to beat his name

out the dirt. i beat the earth like a nigga.

i threw hands at the earth like a punk muhfucka

& the ground chuckled, said my nigga. what is you doing?!

you can’t hear the wind drunk off the kindred lent?

can you hear the great roll from way off like a big nigga

laughing in an alley? how your dead auntie laugh

when she see you still ain’t grew into that big-ass head!

like your real friend laugh when you still the same ugly

as yesterday! same ugly as always! same ugly as his last life!

jumped!

there, on the ground like dirt or a bird

December froze & May thawed, blood

misted, crying for any mother, the boy

who called your mama a bitch bleeds

our love for you, his wings frozen & fighting

our gust of sneakers.

we storm him because we love you

& your mama has fed us & only us

is allowed to call her out her name

because we know her name, Phyllis,

& she bad & only we can say so

& when we bad she has permission

from our mamas to beat us like we hers.

we hers like you hers. you our boy.

we pool our punches into the boy

like quarters for a bag of flaming hots.

we make him look like a bag of flaming hots.

lord forgive me, but i don’t regret it

& on the real all these summers later

i miss it. i wish a little bit to gather round

a man & stomp in the name of love

beat what he said about my next to blood

back into his gleeyellow mouth, to make

his mouth a sparkling smashed tomato.

really tho. Leland, you remember

how we beat ole boy? our middle

school ritual, his thirty-second eternity.

later, i licked his blood off my Nikes