Poetry

they called us mothers too & for this we laid low
with our eyes to the ground, opened our mouths
into dirt & prayed for the chance to be useful.

Let the wild desert we made bloom remember / while the world debates the historical / amnesia we call inheritance. / —Memory outlives bodies & buildings; becomes legacy.

Praise to the tail whip, Big Poppa-wheelie, the noise that persists even when the rest of the world / has gone silent. I mean, have you ever watched a Black boy blossom –

I split myself into halves/then halves again. An egg split open/creasing yolk, rolling smaller spheres/all yellow inside.

pulp. peel my skin,
spice, fry. bones
crushed, tasted.
swallow my tongue.

I told you, “no es importante”
I laid your head on my chest
told you, “escucha”
escucha la lengua de mi corazón

I recite prayers and my ancestors respond, there is no good, no evil only sand where language fragments and clumps when salt rushes to meet it

Saving these children / means leaving their grandmother / to be swallowed by bullets and a lake