Never Apologize.

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On Mother/s

My mother force feeds me bitter lemons and kerosene Sets my body aflame Kerosene lamps don't always guide us out of darkness Don't always shine in forests filled with bitter lemon trees at night Yesterday I sat behind a man that looked just like my first rapist I remembered she didn't believe me I was just a fast tailed girl who gave it up for the first time in her house I tell you she did not believe me Did not want me to hurt the same way I somehow know she did I know she swallowed bitter lemons Was doused in kerosene and did not know it When I pursed my lips to tell her so she called me slut bucket Disrespectful ingrate My face was never so hot I didn't know I raised a whore she said You're dragging your name through the mud yourself Your mother is always right she said Gaslit me into thinking I'd be failure Make the same mistakes she did Can't make the same mistakes she did because flaws are all together unique I know she sees herself in me Sees a firecracker with a half inch left in its wick It's scary I'm just as volatile as she is Mommy I know I'm not the woman you wanted me to be I like chains and whips I wave queer flag pink yellow blue I read about the struggles of others Have the heart to fight for them too And my dreams expand beyond the confounds of this small ass town I'm sorry I'm not like you and somehow just like you I'm sorry I don't want to feel this fire down my throat anymore I'm sorry I let the world get in my head and forgot where I came from Forgot how you raised me Became an educated devil And even when I don't wear your shackles their imprints are still on my wrists My ankles still bleed from the friction of walking in them I'm shrinking From sitting in your cardboard box so long I don't know if I can grow anymore So why do I keep drinking from your well? Letting this poison rule my veins? Burning at your stake? Breathing in clouds of toxic smog while you call it tough love? I know this will make me sick When black mothers birth black daughters they also birth mirrors Douse themselves in kerosene and pick from the ripest bitter lemon trees They see pain And promise And ask a God that does not always answer they if could be whole If love brands ever heal If someone would protect their daughters from the hurt they felt If they'd never have to know what bitter lemons or kerosene tastes like I'm convinced That yellow citrus and hellfire fuel is all my mother ever knew Yet I love her No Less

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Sentiments After the Slam or Death of an Unknown Poet at CUPSI 2018

CUPSI 2018 was a month ago and another mediocre poem came out of it.

6.9

8.5

10

10

10

an ass backward love poem to slam

even though I hate you most days

even though you ain’t shit

even when I know I’m not the only one that feels like this

I love you anyway

so much I keep standing in this ring

letting you rock my jaw

because a beating feels better than the poet I am back

home

all imaginary

all fantasy

all fiction

like so,

you see

the real poet only appears behind the mic

when I spit for YOU

open up my mouth and spill blood for a number

for judges on Armageddon

some community

“good” energy

snaps and a couple stomps

tried to make these words holy and still wound up devil

what good is a score if not to rip out your soul?

make it a ghost

you know,

cheapen it up

make it a chore

I’m tired of writing for you now

fashioning my trauma into a boutfit

to put on for sport and take off after show

because clothes don’t heal nobody’s wounds

these words don’t

either

is it worth it?

this spectacle

this breaking of bodies

this bleeding

this violence

for a 10

or an 8.2

on a poem about a nightmare I keep reliving

you should know the PTSD all too well

I’m not even sure I write for me anymore

but can’t give you up somehow

too trapped inside your glamour

or fake ass glory

your “community”

want to dull this sword disguised as a mic

it’s making a hole in my chest again

couldn’t stitch it up this time

couldn’t stop the bleeding

the death of another poet

how many more unmarked graves?

how many more eulogies without a name?

it’s fucked up really

how we drag ourselves through trenches for YOU

with no one to greet us after the war except a whiteboard with questionable scores sometimes

maybe some tears

maybe our teammates

is this what it is to be unrequited?

to rain into a storm drain

and have to call a sewer home?

you should know this love still pours over

even with your whiteboards and double edged swords

the death of so many poets in unmarked graves

it still flows

so why can’t you just love us all

back?

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Crossroads

Do you know what it feels like to be a ghost in a shell?

To be trapped inside your own consciousness and perform fiction so often you convince yourself it’s truth?

This is for the time it took to say I’m a proud pansexual Black girl in a world that has wanted me cured lynched or witch hunted for centuries

Kindergarten, Aaliyah wanted to hold my hand and I didn’t think twice

First grade, blond haired, blue eyed Holly was cute to me too

Third grade, Casey wanted to kiss my forehead under the slide on the playground… and the boys bullied him for dancing and wearing pink

Do you see the rainbows in my frescos yet?

I been queer I mean different I mean somewhere on this spectrum we call colorful my whole damn life

I’m just a people pleaser who is attracted to more than gender presentations Who loves pretty faces and even prettier souls regardless of how much they might have defied this world and have choked on themselves

Who came outside herself when, by middle school she knew she was not like other girls

And by college she came out as a QPOC with a pink, yellow, blue pin on her backpack

My identity is not a mistake Or a choice Or a goddamn trend

And these crossroads are not untraveled They are marked by screeched tires U-turn and Potholes This Is evidence of the times I took the right of the fork in the road

This Is for every time my parents asked me “why can’t you just like boys” and I sunk into their line of questioning

This Is for the flag I can never drape over my bedroom door back home and the Pride parades I could never be caught marching in

For keeping part of me a secret… redacting the queer from my woman and my Black

I am disguised as a free loving colored girl A Bohemian goddess too ungodly

Maybe I’m Sappho in search of Aphrodite Or I wanted Adonis to myself Or somebody else entirely

Maybe I’m just like you Except fighting for my right to exist Walking in my truth for the first time Tasting the sea salt in my tears recycled from ocean

So when 49 died at Pulse, I could not help but become lake I saw myself in she/he/they I could have been a queer black woman tasting the bitter of bullets and gunpowder for the first and last time Bathing in my blood on neon dance floors Bathing in my Pride With one foot in the threshold of my closet like most of the Southern Belles

Most of us don’t know how to swim good But cross bodies of water ever so quietly and do no drowning

We learn how to breathe in our colors Too

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Anger Like gritting my teeth on summer nights when the air is too thick to stand Backing in corners walled between unappreciation and irresponsibility It is silence Or screaming til my lungs give out yet no one can hear it Turning my back Pounding pavement Hoping a knife does not find its way to vertebrae Lost Between lovers Regained With every instant I remember Why I left the first time

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Kween

I ain't your kween

Ain't your royalty in the morning time

Ain't the face of respectability

because

I

chose to live freely

This woman here,

all 5'4 and thick,

rich

like a Caramel Macchiato,

was the product of working class love

That brown skinned baby turned in her mother's belly and

She felt fire resting there

A water sign that would not decline

to spit back 1,000 degrees

to the likes of 1 million suns

I am that woman

Painted with melanin and 3C afro

UGLY is my name

Or at least to this world

with its bullshit Eurocentric standards

I am only beauty when it’s stolen from me

Put on to non-Black bodies and they say, how chic!

It becomes brand new

Something for blonde haired

Blue eyed

Spray tanned

Unoriginal

White washed

culture to cling to

And they call it high end fashion

Saving me the cash in

Recall

I ain't your kween

Not straightening the bends in my sexuality

I am NOT the face of respectability

Ain't gon assimilate to your politic...

Fuck.

That.

Shit.

I will speak my ebonic unapologetically

Say my boy bye’s with a little more twang

Swear until my heart's content

Twerk my ass through the night

Keep some cut at my bedside

Live my revolution with no less respect

Because

I ain't your kween

Ain't your lady

Ain't your Miss

Believe I am the thunder of a storm

Its lightning

Its rains

Its floods casted down on a society with a Jezebel image of me

You see, I

Am on an endless pursuit of bad bitchery

No,

I

Am madam to an endless reign of bad bitchery

that will not be seized from me

Claimed from my body

or removed from my brain

I’m a BAD BITCH

And Female dog ain't a cursing of my name

Only when y’all niggas tell it

I’m the boss bitch who shakes her curls in platform pumps

Sets the ground you walk afire

Don’t you see me?

Is it clear yet that the world could fit in

the palms of my hands if it let it?

I am here

so take a good look.

And don’t you forget

I ain't your kween.

But you can still bow.

[mercurialexicon]

To Chester From A Community Scorned

Dear Chester: Cheetos ain’t ever been our favorite snack Especially not when they’re stale According to you, by 2020 we can forget: One. Racism. (WE ARE A POST RACIAL SOCIETY) Two. Seasoned Food. (CUMIN AND ADOBE ARE TOO SPICY) Three. An America Divided (WE’LL ALL BE PATRIOTIC BY THEN) Four. Healthcare for All (WE ALL GOT PRE-EXISTINGS NOW) But really… We smell the scent of cheese powder a little too strong and our stomachs turn for: Black lives that don’t matter. Queer ones trapped inside theirs. Muslim ones contained by borders. Latino ones that fear brick walls. Sick ones in search of healing. Poor ones grinding for a dime. Wombs that don’t belong to self. (Yes, even the ones in bodies that did this shit #fiftythreepercent) And the world melting right before our eyes. Call it subdued enragement as not to be ‘angry’ black feminists (But to be frank, we mad as hell) This is a nineteen eighty-four year supply of flaming hot Cheetos that will burn our throats raw (Ain’t it funny how that’s war backwards?) Let us be clear… These hands might be registered weapons and our tongues mighty powerful and our people real spiritual. So to you and your klan: Don’t. Get. Your. Feelings. Hurt. This AmeriKKKa ain’t Transatlantic, boo Black don’t reside in Massa house no ‘mo BLACK DON’T BELONG TO Y’ALL NO 'MO and we ain’t afraid to fight back. Remember, white is the absence of all color so you can’t state claim to rainbow Sidenote: That ain’t alternative fact. Tell us if your ineloquence is on purpose and if you REALLY invested in “making America great again” While you at it, who else’s pussy are you grabbing? We would like to know if you eat stale ass Cheetos in the Oval and if each and every EO is stained with an orange too hued to be natural We wonder if you wash them down with vanilla bean shakes laced with the blood of our ancestors. Call us the ninety-four percenters Also known as, the only population in this nation that REALLY had some damn sense Just so you know, we been doing the bulk of this work on our own Our ballots ain’t put you on Pennsylvania Avenue and you damn sure ain’t our President We just saying we fuck with Lemonade (Shout Out to Yoncé) and Salt Vinegar Lays.

Signed, A Community Scorned

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Precious Angels

It was the year 2000 or 2001 I don’t remember the month or day I just remember I was in Kindergarten 5 year old carefree curly headed black girl Her name was Precious And so was she

She was my first best friend We put life into silly putty Rode the bus to school Talked during naptime and got put in time out

She was my first best friend Precious was her name and so was she

I remember the sound of the choppers and the flyers around our neighborhood Five Year Old Missing Black Girl... last seen at her grandmother’s house

Three days later I remember the grief counselors at my school The news reporters and the interviews A trash bag in a small stream with her broken body I remember a white man’s mugshot on TV

All she wanted was a swing set and glass of water All she wanted was a friend My god did she not know that pale skin preys on lambs? How could she? We did not know danger then I was 5 years too young to understand

This is before I was a poet Before I could have given her a proper eulogy<\p> I’m 21 now And my conscience is a haunted house I see her ghost sometimes She dances and laughs like I do She sings I still hear her voice at night And I've never even been to her gravesite

While the monster under her bed sits on death row I wonder what her final hours felt like

If she used her soft whispers to proclaim me poet before she took her last breath If she bestowed this talent on to me If she realized Angel was her middle name Precious Angel… If she heard God call her back to Him

When a little black girl dies, do not cry at her homegoing Instead, let your optic white teeth shine Play hopscotch and double dutch Shape figures out of silly putty Write a poem just as magical as she was

Celebrate her beauty and innocence Know she always was soft enough That her very birth Her breathing black body was resistance And even in death she still resists Her tombstone protests: “Here lies a little black girl who blessed the world in a SNAP” “Here lies everything colorful”

Even the gone girls resist The poor girls resist The ghetto girls resist The hood girls resist The fast tail girls resist They all share one name: Precious Angel And so was she And so is me And so are we

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10 Reasons Why You Will Call Me Woman OR Why Female Is Some Whack Shit

One. Female refers to any species coded XX in their chromosomes capable of populating this fine earth. Newsflash: I am not my womb. I don’t birth babies to your benefit. I am more than a vagina, a set of breasts, thick thighs and a fat ass. This body is not for sale and damn sure not for your consumption.

Two. A Female could be a cow. Or a cat. Or a fox. Or a fucking blue whale. There is a word for humans of the feminine persuasion. Please tell me why y’all so set against using it?

Three. FEMALE strips me of my humanity. Reduces me to object fit for your labor. But not entitled to the same inalienable rights as you Malcolm did say the most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. We are now coming to collect back rent from the years of you living on ours.

Four. We don’t ever hear y’all say [insert any race other than Black here] females. You love your Kylie Jenners, JLo’s and foreign women But let a Black girl speak up and she too loud She too ghetto She too angry Her skin too dark and hair too nappy I guess we all jiggaboos now

Five. Because y’all never say that shit in a positive light. I mean NEVER. #FemalesBeLike #TheseFemales If you wanna call me bitch, I’d rather you call me bitch. Don’t try to be politically correct now nigga!

Six. We don’t call y’all “males” Grammatically speaking, That shit sound like an abomination rolling of the tongue And I promise you I spit nothing but inferno

Seven. Female implies sex and gender are the same. Repeat after me: SEX AND GENDER ARE NOT THE SAME. You cannot conflate a social construct to biological basis. Obey the spectrum and stay in ya lane.

Eight. FEMALE is not inclusive to trans, intersex, non-binary or any other identity apart of the aforementioned spectrum. KEEP YOUR PRIVILEGE IN CHECK.

Nine. I don’t give a damn how comfortable calling me female makes you feel. This isn’t about you. This is about the inherent violence laced in your language. This is about dog whistle politics. This is about equity and intersectional feminism.

Ten. Allow me to draw you to the Black Feminist Thesaurus of Where You Had Me Fucked Up Woman. Part of speech: noun Human. May or may not be female. Magician. Motherfucking Goddess.

Respect My Title

Address me the way I demand to be addressed Or keep your words behind those dusty ass lips, boy.