The Brooklyn Rail

casting call  #1                                   “Black (LA) woman”

what the white folk rave
as the best poet out
of
LA

is a Black magician’s puppet
fire dancing
at the whisky a go-go
on sunset

“me” was
woman almost
on a decent los angeles day


i cook up courage in cauldrons

considering against         the cast iron
on my grandmother’s stove
which slaved
sizzled the breast
 of
chicken to cry
unsatisfied in her husband’s belly

on my 29th birthday, i confessed

the indignation

of

my conception

here

my father giggled at the possibility
my mother stared blankly at her blessing

a loved mistake



my mother’s throat cleared                    “too late”

to discover you are
a transcendental
accident manifested
through light speed
of
what the soul’s been yearning                    for               millennia

is the hardest throat slicing pill to swallow

my face blossomed         in a bitter womb
my two eyes     had to be inconsistent
to forget
the raw realities
that come bellowing

out

my

mouth

my third one
got gouged
out

pussy

the oppressor’s tongue
travels up my spine

makes me arch
against the sensation
until my world is down
on all fours




my ego decided:                       i guess

my ego desires
payment
in repetitive rejections
of
the pink bow
placed on my head       at birth

my ego said

“this pussy is just an instrument you use
to duplicate the nonsense
of your father’s makeshift manhood”

my ego knows
it never needed teeth
to make nice
with this universe’s chaos
my ego said “ask about me”

//invisible in a hollywood lens


my ego will two-step
& jiggy against
all their tap dancing pens

write about “me”

my ego’s smile got c(r)opped
coon
on the front steps
of
the academy


my ego cried

“all the this white man’s theory gon’ make a better nigger out of me”

in the confines
of
his bed
is where i][am   “made”
“woman”


to          “make”
“him” cum

afterwards     he had a tendency

to reminisce about
his ex-girlfriend


she was sweet//midwestern


he said he had
a thing
for LA women

he said they don’t
“make”
“them”
like “me”
anywhere else

my hair
always burning
fire dancing
against their fever
pitch
contend with
their tendencies
to shape me    lady-like

like lady                                i am approximately woman

rat race; the mickey mouse in me wants to eat your face

they beg me                to steady my spirit               when they can’t take
hold of my reins
i’m still            dancing for         myself
riding angles                        until the soul          can’t break no more
passive weekends          with angels                  sounding their horns at my bedside
blood gut           deliveries                       received as pastel crucifixions
lucid revelries
brain dead on tuesdays
tugging at the wheel                                   like we gon’ run
outta time
running through                 the wheel               like all we have
is time
grave dig into my ovaries
find a muted universe                name it lilac                   turn it red
wishes writing               their visions                 into a favorite
conquest
tell ‘em all                 to makeshift their own
dreams
make it desperate         &               begging for mercy
my lineage                   never taught                    me
how to be
just how to serve
i never wanted these prayer hands
i opted to be a project of eloquent violence
god is as real                as she never        was
they all got                  kingdoms        hissing
 behind their eyes             yet fail to admit             in order       for
 a Black woman to worship herself
as god                                   god must change

do you see the sky bending over backwards anytime soon?

why wear a crown           when you can make              claim to your own head?
what good is truth
when all you can do is think about it?

i endow myself                as the monument        of my own fantasies

the pros & cons of my faithfulness
less margery kempe more Roxanne Shanté
spitting cayenne takes between loads of laundry
with mama’s expectations hounding at my backside
the frenetic consciousness         of my body   holds more weight
than the tedious posture of the poet
chin up                                      eyes down
snarling niceties in the grace of fairness
hit the mic & gravitate into a flow
only to ask my mind’s mirror:


my readiness is already being         {interpreted}  {hinted}    i’m always auditioning to be
i’m a tyrant to this fashion                           carry in my essence
an audacity against decor

Black                    &            unexcellent
human to a fault
a hybrid corpse              defying continuum          to become america’s
most         brilliant      psycho
a stream                 of consciousness             sold down  river
everything        is              available        to           pollute

being born                 with only a touch              of reality
i refuse to be minimized
y’all not gon’ do me how you did Wanda
 i’ve   become      righteously         indignant         &   hyper      aware
of the whiteness       that powder kegs        this excuse           of an interrogation

my new poem: full of my ego
instead of myself

my los angeles melancholia will wears its hat again

a compound fraction
in the study of
undeniable madness
i’ve been trying
to destroy
this reality
since i first opened                          my eyes

surveying all the peace             I can               disturb
if i have             yet to find my own
i dare you to pick up a pen & not bubble-in a poem i dare you not to sleep on any prodigious Black woman’s soliloquy
i dare you to hold these words & find yourself implicated in the violent acts
that serve as the backdrop to the blood spilled onto these pages
i dare you to hold your applause to pull the machete out of your neck