by Aja Monet
could’ve gone to jail for wanting
her kids to have a decent education,
she walked back and forth, forth and back,
dreaming of better futures for us. lying
and laying paths. this country promised
no child left behind, she put us first.
there’s a way around the system,
just ask the right questions
never take no for an answer.
inner healing
something about hospital doorways
doctors come and go from a realm of questions
bootleg medicine men, IV machines and stale
sheets, bleached of bodies, the halls reek of begging
or pleading. these sterile buildings make me horrible
i do not like hospitals: fake smiles and soulless food.
frightened by grief, confused for dying
what lingers in the pain of it all, is this numb
if you feel like you are always near death
i make peace with what is certain
alejandro jodorowsky once said people should be healed
in the open, healing belongs to the people
so why here, we lowered many heads to many diagnoses
she whispered my name, her arm extending beside her bed
it’s a recurring snow globe shake in my mind
awkwardly standing there, longing to touch her
in a room that could soften her smile, i remember
not caring about the revolution or government
education or poverty, none of it mattered
if i didn’t have a special sorta bond with the spirits that be
in every room i entered, watching over us
all knowing and being. there were many gloomy days
every time the curtains opened, she clung to us
like desolate cliffs, bastards of broken vows
and false hopes. when we weren’t who she thought we were,
she threatened us with dying. i stopped visiting
the hospital. everywhere i went people were sick
dying in public. we prescribe the suffering
people we love die alone
people afraid to love die alone
we watch people die alone, in secret
as if it weren’t happening
we live to die in rooms with people afraid to visit them
footnote
*the way emotion work
we exist between
a self for self and a self for others
give my regards to brooklyn
on the humble
im havin these dreams
where im people watchin
with basquiat
sittin on a curb
on bedford ave
sippin piraguas
talkin about
never thought id live to see the day
coulda sworn i saw otis blackwell
walkin out the corner store
on atlantic ave
smokin a loosie
whistlin a new tune
for elvis to cover
and it was gully right cuz i
caught biggie on a stoop
in bed stuy
sellin dope to a hipster
with ready to die tatted
along the pale of his arm
hadnt seen a hoopty
in a while
when ol dirty bastard pulled up
offerin me a ride to
the pink houses
and suddenly a handsome mocha man
sittin on a nearby fire escape
calls my name
i could tell it was jackie
by the dodgers stitched
across his chest
he told me
i miss home
and then it all fades to black
when i woke the
blue moon was sprawlin
out from its hidin place
limbs hangin over the shoulder
of night, after lovers
had abandoned their bodies
laughin in the corners
of each other.
i was a fulton lamppost
staring at the sky’s cheekbones
shy of stardust
through the blinds of j train tracks
this is how it feels to dream
of being moonlight in east ny
a concrete plant
collecting whispers
of bodega blues
darling sunrise
tickles drumbeat hips
swaying through the
air of sazón
and i envy the morning’s swag
boom boxes hold our windows
open in July
we face our fears
on the cyclone
call romance
a stroll along the boardwalk in coney island
head nods pay respect
on beat
boys playin skully in the street
we used to buy our kicks
in city line
roll a blunt for our fallen
soldiers, and spark
a generation in love with spray cans
and naked tenement buildings
graffiti the spirits of hustlas
with bubble letters
mr softee summers meant
stealin abuelas
santo offerings
for tweety bird on a popsicle stick.
playin hopscotch
on the broken sidewalk
eavesdropping on front stoop
gossip, hair braiding
fingers dancin btwn strands of air
brothers get caught in gangs
get caught
in barbershops
get caught
on street corners
get caught
thrown against the hood of cop cars
seen one too many handcuffs
on the wrists of brown and black skin
we dock slave ships on our shores daily
know rikers island
like a country home
im convinced
my father conceived me
in king’s county arraignments
while daydreamin
of freedom
i owe my life
to the woman
who stopped my mother
on the b56
on her way
to the abortion clinic
and told her
you have a poet coming.
II. witnessing
when a woman writes a poem
she spends time with the gods
on your behalf
the young
know no boundaries
we quake the earth
on our tongues and spit
whirlwinds for lynched
pendulums of our yesterdays
dream for better days
sometimes mothers
free hummingbirds
from their ribcage and they don’t always
learn the art of flying
in our youth
we listen to the world laugh
at the sport of us dying
seafarer of prisons we be
in arm’s reach of reality
how dare they ask us to leave
this scene of the crime
where there is no rhythm to the rhyme
of a dead heartbeat
let us speak
for the slaves
still dancin the soul train
at the bottom of the sea
how we marchin against warfare
with chopped feet
deaf ears and no voice
to speak
they take our freedoms
then our minds
and our rights
to bleed
so i nail my pumping heart
with a pen and i write to bleed
children slit their wrists everywhere
to be like jesus and exist
&n
bsp; a fisherman of fish in the sea
mothers raise their children to become flowers
but then become their weeds
attached at the womb
boys grow into men
but they never leave
trying to fit back in
and make a belly rotate his sun
around the world 360 degrees
we pass our failures
onto our youth and expect them
to follow the lead
ritualizing our death
rocking skulls and bones
on our chest
greek nike chests
they wanna bury us alive like masons
i wouldn’t be surprised if i die for what i’m sayin
life’s a game and i been playin
i aint got time to be tired
i’m not fightin for freedom or justice
im fightin for a soul, sold, lingering on wires
like converses between two telephone poles
above hood concrete where we bleed
cooing and whisper
we speak from our graves
cuz our freedom of speech
is buried and encaged
in the prisons they breed
the world
i used to think i could save it
but i grew up on a block
where it was easy to fall
through the cracks in the pavement
i earned my poetic license so i could say shit
haunted by the blood in me
b/c a junkie father raped it
i used to live my whole life
jonesin to change it
rebellin against my mind
cuz i got so used to our enslavement
i share my soul on a stage
in hopes to get young people
off their slave ships
adults
witness
an old soul
reincarnation
how we quiver and cringe
at the sight of an iraqi nation
children strappin their hearts to bombs
as if god didn’t say shit
how he will send shields and swords
in our wombs
and we willface it
so when a child comes to you
with a fist full of questions
bloody knuckles
and all
and asks you
why her heart is so cold
why her fingers are so numb
how will you answer her?
irreplaceable
visiting hours, we leave
just before the corner store lifts its gate,
apartment windows raise. every one
is a wiretap, listening, a heinous harmony,
whatever reason this time, my uncle is far away
i must fight sleep if i’m serious about seeing him
children always in a state of dreaming, missing is
an irreversible memory, interrupts every awe.
i was tickled by how tall i didn’t remember
he was. a face longing to bring home
shy for wanting something
so out of my hands. there are wars waged among men
i will never fully understand. what’s a poem
to a prison anyhow? i cannot write the laws away
where’s the get out of jail free card
when the punishment don’t fit the crime and our families
do time for lazy politicians and crooked police?
the first time
i hated a cop
he was mouthing off his tongue
to my brother about how he ought
to show him some respect
carrying on and whatnot
as if my brother didn’t have
a little sister watching
who looked up to him
like moonlight and stars
on humid nights
those days he led and i followed
and he kept on
like my brother wasn’t
a skyscraper or something
like he wasn’t
the bridge that led to boroughs
like he wasn’t
my hero
like he wasn’t
the grandson of a union worker
who died building a water tunnel
for a coupla knucklehead kids
trying to turn fire hydrants into car washes
i saw how brown and black boys grow
into themselves angry at the world
that day how no matter what
a sister did to show her love
she couldn’t make a boy no man
he wasn’t bent on becoming
even when i thought i was fighting him
i was fighting them
we were always fighting them
all those people out there fighting us
doing everything to remind us
of our place
and i couldn’t undo
all the hate that builds
watching the men you love cower
watching the men you love cower
bend
kneel to the scowls of overseers
all the bright and magic that dims
the light lowers
the brightandmagic
dims
being policed for being
too poor
too much a shade
a color
a shade of color
too close to the root
too close to the color
the shade
too close
to the color of a beating
being beaten
beatingheart
the whistleblower
if you don’t know my name,
you don’t know your own.
—James Baldwin
eighty miles east
of los angeles
a veteran chars
in the cellar
of a cabin
breathless
luminescent
blowin the blues away
fingers triggerin the air
a trumpet of ash and smoke
his name was
christopher dorner
like nat turner was
a name
like bass reeves was
a name
a name
preserves the spirit
a name
outlives the body
turns
into dust
breath
between the lips
a griot
history will turn him
into a bogeyman
the horrifying color
of despair
wicked with revenge
marooned in a bush
the body bound
by white hoods
bullets of uniformed men
shooting in the dark
sparks of fire and flicker
roasting the breeze
criminals never survive
to tell the story
to utter the violence
of the silence
held against them
no one read the manifesto
and if they did
killing is never justified
unless the spectacle around it
survives our illusion
death is only justice
death is only justice
death is never justice
is only justice
at the hands of
the powerful and mighty
broadcasted in newspapers
and television programs
these days black people
don’t hang from trees
we linger on eyeballs
of newsfeeds
they gawk at the massacre
for all the right reasons
we sanction
the blood shed
while we were busy
killin
g each other
a pine tree stood
defiant
in the woods
a branch split
open bark
wounded and weepin’
wounded and weepin’
a vow
to never be
human
to never be
flesh again
he sits as the debris
settles
watchin us come and go
pickin at the scab
leaves whisperin
of the wind
with stories only
a hiss can tell
71st and collins
for graffiti artist israel “reefa” hernandez
a poet strains to writehis name.the wall dreams
of being held.art is a ceremony for the departed to speak.
every hood has a mural for the dead, who are our selves,
a sea of scrolls,
a street waving soliloquies,
dripping in drum.
it isn’t just that he died—it’s how.
a chest tazed open—man-child electrocuted into a headline,
a pound sign trembling into a portrait of raised fists,
swaying,
swaying
to the backdrop of palm trees.
the wall did not chase him,
the building did not call the police,
a skateboard drifts on concrete,
lifeless at the foot of a badge cussing
the tag he could not finish.
his body drowned in shock, a seashell
of lightning, an emptied stencil,
an aerosol candancing with a tin heart.
could you love this boy,
before you kill him?
could you see a coy toddler finger painting in a pool of ketchup?
love thy neighbor as thou love thy neighborhoods.
protect people
more than property.
he was an artist.he swirled.he spoke cursive.
he used his handsfor good.he drew flowers
where they could notgrow.
#sayhername
i am a woman carrying other women in my mouth
behold a sister, a daughter, a mother, dear friend.
spirits demystified in a comrade’s tone. they gather
to breathe and exhale, a dance with death we know
is not the end. all these nameless bodies haunted
by pellet wounds in their chest. listen for us in
the saying of a name you cannot pronounce, black