#reginald dwayne betts

[firstfullmoon]

Reginald Dwayne Betts, “Petrichor”

[luthienne]

Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Felon; “Night”

[Text ID: Listen, who hasn't waited for something / to happen? I know folks died waiting. I know / hurt is a wandering song. / I was lost in my fear.]

[smokefalls]

the room fills with / Familiar sounds, then memory, / Then ache.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, "The Things We Carry" from Doggerel

[feral-ballad]

Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Felon: Poems; “A man drops a coat on the sidewalk and almost falls into the arms of another”

[Text ID: “One almost caresses the face of the other. / Lovers are never this gentle, are never this”]

[woundgallery]

[havingapoemwithyou]

white peonies by Reginald Dwayne Betts

[lesbianboyfriend]

For A Bail Denied

Reginald Dwayne Betts

For A.S.

I won’t tell you how it ended, & his mother won’t, either, but beside me she stood & some things neither

of us could know, & now, all is lost; lost is all in what came after—the kid, & we should call him kid, call him a

child, his face smooth & without history of a razor, he shuffled—ghostly—into court, & let’s just call it a cauldron, &

admit his nappy head made him blacker than whatever pistol he’d held, whatever solitary awaited; the prosecutor’s

bald head was black or brown (but when has brown not been akin to Black here? to abyss?) & does it matter,

Black lives, when all he said of Black boys was that they kill?—the child beside his mother & his mother beside me &

I am not his father, just a public defender, near starving, here, where the state turns men, women, children into

numbers, seeking something more useful than a guilty plea & this boy beside me’s withering, on the brink of life &

broken, & it’s all possible, because the judge spoke & the kid says —I did it I mean I did it I mean Jesus—

someone wailed & the boy’s mother yells: This ain’t justice. You can’t throw my son into that fucking ocean. She meant jail.

& we was powerless to stop it. & too damn tired to be beautiful.

[oldwinesoul]

and sometimes there is nothing — just days and their ruthless abundance.

—Reginald Dwayne Betts