SELF PORTRAIT OF THE BLK GIRL BECOMING THE BEAST EVERYONE THOUGHT SHE WAS

(first published in Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database)

the moon is my first emotion then beast then happy rage
depending on a zealous appetite

i pull bobby pins from the kitchen of my scalp tear out nails

one by one pluck out the lashes yank docile teeth

fold the skin back by the mouth i release my human flesh & night drops

blue wolves circle the block in acute madness
dreaming in gun smoke & new names to pick their fangs clean

the moon sways blood & voices behind yellow eyes,
each of the names bow inside me.

i grin & the moon is an anxious pulse i, a hungry one

in overexposure, the moon could make anything feral
i only eat a macabre light & the night is so sweet on my tongue

fear makes the blue wolves multiply

the moon rummages through the light of my name like a vagrant beggar
tills the blood in my four-legged body

born non-white & woman, call the thing what it is:

hostile uppity neck-rolls hips without the logic mean-mugs vengeful at the root

but you’ve only known my mercy

a snatched tongue: polite hands: crossed legs: a settled throat: plea and please two hands on the same body

never my unhinged joy

in my first language—the cease of blood before writhing—

the push back

knuckling of bone & sinew a blue neck caught inside a maw & how each muscle negotiates

before severing

god of the faithful night, teach me to lose my mouth in reverie

to laugh in my predator’s blood to let it fill my belly

how it trickles through the floorboard of my teeth

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SELF-PORTRAIT AS ITOLIA

(first published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry)

i tell myself i'm above capitalism,
but get angry when my package
isn't delivered on time.

sun, you touch my window & i wait
for my parcel like a woman hoping
her dead husband would finally pull

his body from the battlefield. how he called me a bitch
because i creased a page in the book he's reading.
his name, a loose tooth in my mouth.

history repeats itself. history drags itself
out of the water. history drags its shadow over memory.
memory & history sit on opposite ends of my dinner table.

i pour them both a cup of black tea.
memory pulls at its face & begins to unravel,
asks me, what of yours has gone missing?

the chiaroscuro of light haloing his body hair,
his hands tracing the dry want of my mouth.
he says, i want to wake every day and choose you

i saw him naked but that doesn't mean
i recognize him in daylight.
i say, don't promise me that. i know this world.

buzzfeed tells me old lovers are apologizing
for past transgressions. an ex-friend says,
i don't mean to sound like an ex-boyfriend

but i miss you & want you back.
my best friend said god made me short
so i can't grab grown men by the scruff of their neck.

there are so many names i've been called,
i said to memory, but none of them belong to me.
every day i look out my window

like a woman who missed out on her life
being everyone's something else.
fuckboys on twitter pray to their god,

Future. i'm lonely, but at least i belong to myself.
history drinks from its cup, asks me to say something true:
i long for the days when men went to war & never returned.