we finna abracadabra the fuck outta mangrove

Selected by Shayla Lawson as the winner of the 2022-2023 Editor’s Prize in Poetry

“reader, consider the kwansaba: poem in which you celebrate all the Black you either is or ain’t.” —Aurielle Marie

i: 

In nappy hair, pan-African voodoo chants
invocations, coils careening on how bitches brew
gang signs sweet in melanin—family heirlooms.
Estrogen battles against ancestors, body soon following
wind, hurricanes spilling away inherited forms, which
indicates a shot at freedom. Beautifully trans
host of a whole ecology, overflowing with

Cantu forest & shea butter soils. I
shake copper curls & biblical beetles, freed,
spring forth, nourished by my spellbound mane
of nature & what’s hair but another
fertile ground for ancestral riots? Star kissed
queer in morning glow—fist full of history,
afro-pick flush with the promised land. 

ii: 

we finna abracadabra the fuck outta mangrove
swamps, wizard fulgurite with trans nigga magics
& yea, we unabashedly Black, mouth midnights
all the white gods of language: binary—
ain’t shit; shapeshift—code switch; articulate—Black
as fuck, smooth-talk DNA encoded; spell-caster—
gxrl, I’m mythical auntie, enchanting, making y’all

as black & free as America ain’t.
Dear reader, whatchu think? Cuz we really
making music here! Together, like a childhood
magic turning bedrooms to kingdoms, impossibility made
realness, wishing upon black holes, sprouting wings
gifted to mothers grieving sons, daughters; starlight
slicing ebony skies, tears ablaze like pearls in the night.