bunnies die everyday...
"The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly." La Marr Jurelle Bruce
if it wasn’t for the magic, i wouldn’t be here cracking sunflower seeds in my cheek, twisting dreadlocks, suffering the creamy crack, dangling two silver hoops in pierced ears, smelling pizza stores down the block, Marlboro men catcalling, women cat walking in kitten heels, they watching, tasting lust on half quarter mooned lips, chewing magnolia and cherry soda, missing black boxes with red numbers tell time with too many channels, phone wires drugged and plugged into kitchen corded receivers dialing up MySpace or aim, or away message if you put your ear to the soil you can still hear the rumblings of a black planet and a salted watery angel with glittered fuscia jelly sandals singing her siren song - emerging from the beach into a home that played kiss fm till 9am Mike Jack on repeat till 5 and gospel only on Christmas forgetting black and white tiles covering marbled floors the plywood paneling replaced with ivory paint, the pans’ silver burnt bottoms and edges, from years of feeding children the cornbread, a history baked into barrettes and bobby pins, collards rinsed in the atlantic, rice washed in the pacific, chitlins for the adults on new years the black eyed peas for the wizard of oz and elderly babysitters on the 21st floor standing on balconies I’ll never make love on, parkways leading to oceans corner stores still selling loosies - linda playing numbers boxed or straight - an interior designer if only her dreams had come true, in her neutral home with plastic covered sofas sat on when family comes over - parents who lost the war on drugs - aunties who lost uncles to the blood, or the sugar, or the gout, or the all timer’s disease, nieces dead from getting fucked too rough…the details if it wasn’t for the magic I wouldn’t be here drawn out of a bespoke baptism watering seeds sewn into my ancestors’ cornrows, lavender grown in infertile soil roots planted backward in a blood soaked prequel the hangman comes for us in the cotton and indigo fields. in the reprise a mother wants their sons’ disfigurement on the cover of Jet, an opinion piece on how the metal cotton gin fan he was tied to weighed more than his boy body. every time I hear Korryn Gaines’ name I have an episode. say her name, please say her name.
mm, emerald, the unbroken breath of this poem is the form holding the mind together while saying her name. the epigraph from la marr jurelle bruce told us what you were doing before we read a word. and the sensory catalog moving from sunflower seeds and silver hoops to the cotton gin fan and the jet cover is the inventory of how black women survive what wasn’t supposed to be survivable. every time i hear korryn gaines’ name i have an episode. say her name, please say her name. you said it. and so are we. 🤎