I DIDN’T LIKE YOU WHEN I MET YOU
but like the funk of a dude unwashed & sun-whooped
i learned the need. & like dude, you were stank & i
was stank right back, two skunks pissed & pissing, smelling like skunks.
but somehow (was it mutual hate for a stanker fuck? a song
our dueling shoulders found each other in? a synced nod?
being the only of our kind in a room full of not-us?) here we live
two stank bitches, thick as mothers, a lil gone off love’s gold milk.
i didn’t know when i thought, i don’t like that hoe, it was just
my reflection i couldn’t stand. i saw it. the way you would break me
into a better me. i ran from it. like any child, i saw my medicine
& it looked so sharp, so exact, a blade fit to the curve of my name.
what a shame. i was slow to you. walked up on you like a bee trapped
in a car – all that fear pent in my wings, those screaming, swatting giants
& then, finally, the window, the wind, the flowers, the honey
myqueenmyqueenmyqueen!
MY POEMS
my poems are fed up & getting violent.
i whisper to them tender tender bridge bridge but they say bitch ain’t no time, make me a weapon!
i hold a poem to a judge’s neck until he’s not a judge anymore.
i tuck a poem next to my dick, sneak it on the plane.
a poem goes off in the capitol, i raise a glass in unison.
i mail a poem to 3/4ths of the senate, they choke off the scent.
my mentor said once a poem can be whatever you want it to be.
so i bury the poem in the river & the body in the fire.
i poem a nazi i went to college with in the jaw until his face hangs a bone tambourine.
i poem ten police a day.
i poem the mayor with my bare hands.
i poem the hands off the men who did what they know they did.
i poem a racist woman into a whistle & feel only a little bad.
i poem the president on live TV, his head raised above my head, i say Baldwin said.
i call my loves & ask for their lists.
i poem them all. i poem them all with a grin, bitch.
poemed in the chair, handless, volts ready to run me, when they ask me what i regret
i poem multitudes multitudes multitudes.
