I drop your name,
candles burning
with false beliefs,
the flame awakening
a desire for more, while
singeing the edges
of safe complacency.
I sip the wine of forgetting
—the depth of your voice,
your rumbling laugh—
and taste the stale bread
that’s life without you.
I dip my hand
in covenant waters,
cold and ritualistic,
my fingers too wet
for the missal.
And so I fall
in genuflection,
on the kneeler
of my penitence,
to scorn the Rite
of forgiveness.
When you walk away,
when the sun sets
upon your turning back
and your hand blocks
the moon from shining light
into what we were, don't say goodbye
before you go; don't let the words spill
like tears that land carelessly
upon barren ground that had never
been yours to tread upon;
don't touch my weeping face
as it crumbles between the furtive
fingers that had once held it together;
don't hold me in the slippery embrace
of your passions, an hourglass
that keeps me trapped
in an ampoule of endless grieving;
don't turn around while I drown
in a mound of salt that keeps my raw pain
from rotting and only adds flavor
to the sorrow of letting you go.
Just walk away.
The smell of rain at dusk, a scent so familiar
it takes me back to the countryside of another yesterday;
the taste of your lips grazing mine, still moist,
and the butterflies linger after you’re gone;
the sound of your laughter mingling with mine,
a lava lamp bubbling, just waiting to explode;
when the irises of your eyes darken and expand,
and I can feel the passion skim over your skin;
when I hold my breath as truth slips through my fingers
and I’m unsure whether you’ll catch me as I fall;
the feel of your fingers grasping mine because you know
that I don’t speak a love language, though it flutters under my skin;
soft music on strings that loses itself in the ridges of my auricle,
the smooth bow whispering sweet-nothings into my ear;
your voice when you say my name an octave too low,
a murmur that leaves me breathless for words;
a poem so well written it takes on a life of its own
and I let it take my breath away in its stanzas.
I read Langston Hughes in an inhale
sucking in his words through my nostrils
and breathing him deep into my lungs
until they cling to each air sac like
oxygen moving across paper-thin walls
that can’t hold back his essence.
I read Langston Hughes in my skin,
absorbing images of Harlem dreams
and Renaissance, dark beauty and
an America mumbling in the dark,
my hairs standing on end with excitement,
electricity simmering over the expectation
of the negro artist and racial mountain.
I read Langston Hughes in my eyes,
rapidly blinking the dreams deferred
holding fast to my lashes like stars
clinging to a dark sky that holds no judgment
except the vast universe that it holds
in the black palms of its hands, carrying
the words of a generation, of an entire race.
I read Langston Hughes in my fingertips
as they press down on my chewed-up pen
and scribble poetry written in inkblots,
the memory of my people seeping
into each line until, someday, I too,
can travel through time
in someone else’s poem.
I could tell you about the sunset,
the way it streaked across the sinking sky
burrowed in between mountains,
or the way the annoying cicadas
sang their songs at dusk and my
American nights became too quiet,
or the breed of horses my father kept
in the yard for shows, their huffing
and elegance betraying their animalistic
indignation, where equestrian sports
became ridiculous on TV,
or the way the beach stretched out
across the sand close to the tent,
murmurs of mermaids and castles as I lay
under the stars, so bright I could reach up
and touch them, until they’d burn
the tips of my fingers with longing, or
the way the roads weren’t paved
but I still felt civilized,
or the way I lived for the salt of the sea,
the shells I collected,
the sun I coveted as it grazed my skin
with congratulatory back-pats
that made me laugh and dance in the rain,
or
I could tell you about the screaming,
his voice a loud shriek that echoed
in the two-story house even after he was gone,
or
her hollowed eyes when he left her
alone with aching homesickness,
three kids with saucers for eyes
and silence heavy on their tongues,
or
the violent nights when the smell of car grease
under his fingernails transferred
onto my exposed thighs,
leaving dark streaks of pain that baking soda
couldn’t remove even with scrubbing,
or even
how slippery fingers found
their way into my childhood
and stripped it away from innocence,
ugly secrets no one wanted to hear
but I needed to scream in these words.
But I’d rather tell you of sunsets and beaches,
of rainstorms and horses that carefully conceal
the rot beneath the paradise
revealing the scarred underbelly of my youth,
leaving me exposed to the vultures.
His name was an old picture
framed in the wooden hearts
of our family, the kind that is hung
in every household because
he’s the president, and it proves
our loyalty to king and country,
but this name never clung to our lips,
heavy on the tongue, so that
we couldn’t even speak it
if we’d wanted to, a taboo disguised
in the cloaks of reverence, but naked
in our closet of secrets waiting
to be discovered.
His name was hung
on the walls of our experience
without really being seen
because it’s been there for too long
to remember who’d hung it,
until we were forced to move,
box our belongings
wrapped in newspaper and bubble wrap,
where the name left a blank wall
and became a trinket of value
we carried with us to our new home.
We didn’t hang it on wooden hearts
made soft with understanding, or
on stairwell walls waiting to carry
the legacy of our family; instead
we carried His name in our wallets
and shirt pockets,
close enough to be heard,
near enough to be called upon
when floorboards creak in the new house
and everything expands in the heat.
Rafael Trujillo, last dictator of the Dominican Republic
and bruising purples,
leaving fingermarks
on my soul-being
since
darkness carries me,
keeps the moon pressed
between my breasts
and the stars burning
behind my eyes
where twilight shades
the dusky sky
in shadows of black and blue,
but daylight breaks
and rips apart
what I’ve been chasing
all my life.
(in the style of Jason Reynolds)
... and I’m sitting here wondering why
meaning gets jumbled even
when the words are the same,
and why
shadows
are an absence of light,
or is it an excess of darkness,
and why
I open my mouth to speak
but I am the Tower of Babel
built on a pyre of passion that
reaches too far, scattering
all over the face
without hiding
because
my eyes are too wide
to stay closed
like my mouth
gathering words
that stain my lips
and fall on deaf ears...
