Boned to Bending Thing
– from the forthcoming album Song of Herself where it is sung like Sister
Rosetta Tharpe in her 1938 live performance of “That’s All”

verse 1
Did they tell you I would lay between
your fingers, till you played me from
a boned to bending thing?

—did they—

say my skin would sing any symphony
you slap, if only you snap hard enough?

Did they name you god—and calendar
this the 4th day?—did they tell you fists &
baton can whittle rib-thick till it’s your perfect
clean-picked & sized up thing?

—did they—

say anything before they taught you to
other your children’s mother from lover to
prisoner to something black & free you
had to tame?

—did they—

tell you if you broke me I’d ring, a shame-
thick resonant & broken thing?

chorus

You thought—
you’d played me from a boned to bending thing
took your fiddled fingers struck, plucked me taut
you thought—
you’d tuned me to a voiceless key, you thought
if I couldn’t speak, you’d make my body sing
you thought—
you’d played me from a boned to bending thing.

verse 2
Did they say to instrument me, strip fodder
from bone, hone Adam’s apple to cartilage
marrow to dry?

—did they—

tell you then to make me shine, to bring to bare
this skin to our children’s eyes—so you could shape
me to a shamed & pliant thing?

—did they—

tell you that if you scored me till my skin, thinned
to crescendo marked music sheet, that I would keep
while they all slept here—or wept here

—did they—

tell you that if you beat me from upright into treble
clef—there’d be nothing left to sing?

chorus

You thought—
you’d played me from a boned to bending thing
took your fiddled fingers struck, plucked me taut
you thought—
you’d tuned me to a voiceless key, you thought
if I couldn’t speak, you’d make my body sing
you thought—
you’d played me from a boned to bending thing.

♦

Love, Letter
– after “This, Here” by Kush Thompson

This me you pedastooled. This me you
dressed in 4/4 time—this
Yemeya you mythed into Mary Magdalene—
(right now, I am oiling my locs and spine)

This, where boundary ends.

This body, fret-plucked and blues bent. This—
child-bodied treble clef, man-handled into womaned
upright bass— this 45-year-old face where black
don’t crack, but inside female hands have fissured
space.
This. Place.

Here—I am exceptional, except when composing
my own circuitous symphony. Here where I am
perfect picture only in your magic mirror—see.
here where you have crowned me queen—Here

where your imaginedother half
is halved from the living of your mother,
This same here where a little less than half of me feels
brother and the other half feels lover. Here are my mother’s
missed breaths

(watch—her last exhale still expands my chest)
Here where the dirt she was laid to rest still rests in the corners
of these fingernails. Here where my own one-year-old limbs
pushed up to walk that July day she fell. Here where you fail to see

this feminine falls from Eves’ choked by Adams’ apples—this
here where they were forced to swallow seeds. This here, I am
their fruit, proof they used their own throat to pluck the weeds.

This me you pedastooled. This me you
kept in 4/4 time—this

me you’ll miss if you refuse to—see—
This. Here.This. Me.