& dreamed we were water lilies

holding the water down.

//

they were around me like

nigga1

nigga2            nigga3

nigga4          me          nigga5

nigga6        nigga7

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but what could be safer

than a circle of boys

too afraid of killing you

to kill you?

the fists that broke my ribs also wanted me to live.

i praise each one true god

for each foot that wasn’t

a sharp anything.

each hand laid upon me like a rude & starving prayer.

i had always wanted 8 niggas on me, but not like that.

after a while i started to        like it?

i leaned into it   unblocked my face.

the bottoms of their shoes the sweet of a well-chewed eraser.

i was their promise. their ink.

you should have heard them laugh

a language so delicious i cracked up cracked grin & all.

i didn’t know

a thing about love

until those boys

walked away

so happy.

my heart pouring from my nose.

saw a video of a gang of bees swarming a hornet who killed their bee-homie so i called to say i love you

fall poem

the leaves done done their annual shimmy.

now the streetlight with no soft green curtain

cuts a silver blade across my bed

& my body. i didn’t want to start with leaves

even though i love how the trees turn the color of aunts

& soul-train-line to the ground each October. no one

wants to hear a poem about fall; much prefer the fallen

body, something easy to mourn, body cut out of the light

body lit up with bullets. see how easy it is to bring up bullets?

is it possible to ban guns? even from this poem?

i lie in the light, body split by light, room too bright for sleep

thinking of the leaf-colored bodies, their weekly fall

how their bodies look like mounds of a tree’s shed skin

a child could jump into them & play for hours.

there i go, talking about our dead & if you don’t think

they are your dead, i’ve run from your hands. they are red

like the tree down the street, a hot-air balloon

of blood, the leaves dyed fruit-punch red, red as a child’s red mouth

after an afternoon spent on the porch with a bag of takis

watching other kids walk by, waiting for kids who don’t

pass anymore on the other side of summer, who maybe go

to a different school or moved out east or made like a tree

& now sleep in a box made from one.

rose

i’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense

o California, don’t you know the sun is only a god

if you learn to starve for her? i’m over the ocean

i stood at its lip, dressed in down, praying for snow.

i know i’m strange, too much light makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.