to the skull lying on the bush btwn 51 & 52:

the last time i was home,
there was a dead cat lying
in front of my neighbors' doorstep.
it's not there anymore- in its stead is
a large stain, like a grease spill or a portal.
my mother pointed it out to me as if to say,
"see. look how disgusting."
but death seems to lay in front of
all of our stoops. the television tells me
that a young black girl was shot down
the street from my home, and
my mother ignores it, telling me nonchalantly
about her latest ailments.
"when i cough too hard water comes
out of my sockets." i look at her with sad eyes.
"do you feel these lumps here? and here?"
i probe at her throat with my fingers. yes, i feel them.
she looks at me for a long time.
"what? you should have been here
last week. things were much worse then."
i want very much to look away. this morning, while we
move my things back home, i search for the cat,
half-expecting it mangy black body to still be
rotting in the sun. instead, i see my mother
strain to make her way up the stairs, and i wish
that i was somewhere else entirely.

Div III Blog!

Hey All

Here's a link to the blog that I am doing for my Div III, "The (Sexual) Liberation of Mammy, Pt. 2". Right now, there's nothing on it, but it will be basically the images, texts, etc that have been inspiring my div. Maybe a couple of writing samples? I'm not quite sure what I want to use it for yet. But either way, here's the link:

http://sexualibprodteam.blogspot.com/

I am encouraging other people on my production team to write on it, too, so it (hopefully) won't just be me. YaY DiV LiFe!!

baby bird.

dear mommy:

do you regret that yr daughter is a fat genderqueer hipster dyke artist?

i think these are things that i am starting to like abt myself, but maybe they dont translate the way i want them to in a place like this.

frstrtd

today we saw
a baby bird, fallen out of
its nest,
the little black feathers puffed
around its small frame.
tiny ball of fluff, we
almost missed it in the grass.
we came close to inspect and
it opened its yellow beak, and
screamed for its mother.
we could not help it,
could not touch it without
ruining its chances for survival.
"its mother will
reject it if she smells you on the child."
it reminded me of
that 15 yr old girl's ghost,
who decided to die rather than
let them rape her over and
over and over again.
how many times did she scream, and
lose faith in god?
"her own people would stone her anyway,
if they knew she had been raped"
their only excuse for breaking her spirit.
when we went back
a couple hours later, the
bird was still there. still screaming, but
no sound could escape its throat.
i will scream for you
i will cry for you
i will fight for you
i will keep screaming
FUCK YOU
to the world
until my throat goes dry, because
i have to, at least,
keep hope alive
somehow.

for my grandmother (w.i.p)

to ms. b

this is for my grandmother,
who, as a little mixedgrrl, would
throw bricks
at the other children who
would make fun of her
chiney eyes
and coolie hair.

this is for my grandmother
whose white mother
had a colonizer's tongue and
sexual appetite, and
had to taste every
continent.

this is for my grandmother
whose own siblings
spat at her, the possibility
of her having any black blood
so unappealing to them
that they shunned and
disowned her.

this is for my grandmother
a strong jamaican woman,
who buried her first two children, and
made sure that all 6 of her remaining sons
were born black.

this is for my grandmother,
who my mother swears i resemble.
she says it is in the hunched, broad shoulders, the
wideness of my foot,
the heavy hands that often find themselves
cradling the lower part of my back.
it is in my taste for spicy foods and chilled beer,
in the shape of my mouth, and the
protective look in my eyes.

this is for my grandmother,
whose firm hands caught me
the moment i plopped out of my mother's womb,
who looked down on me, a newborn,
smiled and said, "mine."

what it means to be a man

i'm a man, who
carries his
penis
erect
like a knife,
ready to tear
into the skin of
white america.
i'm a man, who
holds my head
high, and
my back
straight, and
looks down on
anything
that tries to
hold me down.
i am a man,
a black man,
who walks over
the bridges of
my black sister's
bodies, forgetting
the times when
i sucked on her teat,
drew out her power
through her womb and
called it
revolution.

i want

i want you
to look at me like
i am worth something.

i want you to
look at me like ive got
a honey pot around my waist, like
i am every religion wrapped up in one
and you are looking for salvation.

i want you to look at me
like you weren't ashamed of looking,
like you thought i was worth fucking,
like you thought that you could touch me
without cringing, like looking at me
woke up all your chakras, like

when you looked at me you didn't see
a mother. a confidante. look at me
not like a confessional but
like an equal.

no, like a goddess.

heartbreaking.

"When she possesses her followers she dances, flirts and then weeps- because no one can love her enough and the world is not as beautiful as she knows it could be."