I am a child of wayward fruit
trying to touch a violence—
its bruised shape, a mirror
of my own dark face & hers.
Another black butch has been
left to die—by fire this time
& I pray to become smoke:
to suffocate or signal
someone’s boyish child gone
missing, left to rot in that low
lit alley where it is said dykes
don’t die. I chew on that lye
become full of its poison
& spit until the ground opens
humming my name. Who comes
for us black bois, us bulldykes,
bludgeoned into the earth by familiar
men gone ravenous behind something
about our sex? The wet slit between our
legs a way station for involuntary exits
from the body—the splintered crackle
of bone, its backward muscle music,
its queer gospel, some man’s killing anger?
Jari Bradley is a black genderqueer poet and scholar from San Francisco, California. Jari has received fellowships from Callaloo, Cave Canem, and Tin House. Their work has been featured in the Huffington Post, and is listed by Blavity among "15 Creatives in the Bay Area You Should Know." Jari's work has also been published or forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, MARY: A Journal of New Writing, Callaloo, Hot Metal Bridge, Nomadic Ground Press, The Virginia Quarterly Review, BOAAT Journal, and Punctum Books’ Anti-Racism, Inc: Why the Way We Talk About Racial Justice Matters. Jari has an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. They currently serve as Poetry Editor of the University of Pittsburgh literary magazine, Hot Metal Bridge.
