Selected Poems

Swallowing Watermelons

Great Grandmother Maude

She Dreams of a Ten Point Plan

Wanna be white girl

For the Women

how to stop - Labyrinth

Why Do Black People Protest?

Harmattan

America, I’m Leaving You

Great Grandmother Maude

hanging clothes in the summer

that's how I remember her

white sheets

yellow

sun

hot Alabama

shining

beating down on her

disguised behind

a celebrating sky

symphony of clouds

lemonade

and southern hospitality

they are billowing

in the breeze

starched and white

she is

in an apron

it is white

and her dress is yellow

her long black hair is pulled back into a bun

but it keeps slipping out

and she

uses her free hand to brush it back

hair

sheets

white

black

billowing

she hums a love song

Dinah Washington

hums to herself as she remembers

not her children

or her job

not her husband

but she remembers

last night

the sweetest shadow

the slightest sound

and the deepest pleasure

in between these same sheets

which she is washing only because

the evidence must be hidden

her man

not the first or

even her second

he is the young one

fiery and lovely

from across the way

he is the one who is really going someplace

his skin is black as

the Alabama sky is blue

and his kisses are so hot that she shivers in

the relentless sun

she is humming a tune

that only a lady who flirts with death

knows how to sing

and that is how I first remember her.

the next memory is of her

dead

there on those same sheets

laying on the ground with the laundry basket

still on her hip  as if stuck

blood staining the sheets

red evidence of passing

her throat is slit

and her life

seeps away into the ground in shame

a no good woman

left to be remembered by no one

this is my great grand mother

the woman no one spoke of for years

the woman who

marked the beginning

of what

I don't know

 She Dreams of a Ten Point Plan

I wrote this poem in 2020 imagining a Black woman in the white house 

Dedicated to Huey Newton, Bobby Seale authors of the 10 Point Plan

1. The brutal killing of black people must stop children

2. are not meant to be hungry give us lunch and Freedom

3. Schools that teach self-determination and community 

4. Employment is a right, not jails close them and stop police

5. Wars of aggression that support unjust laws in this land

6. We need bread, education, just peace, control of new

7. Technology should make healthcare completely free to we

8. Demand prison reform to so-called crimes under unjust laws 

9. To carry arms to protect ourselves and power to determine

10. Our destiny is not robbery by capitalists, but Unity!

Previously Published in Wall and Response

Wanna be white girl

I was a white girl once

who dreamed of riding a Harley Davidson

and drinking vodka straight

while leaning over a pool table

tattoo on my ankle

that said property of...

I was a white girl

who had white friends

and white boyfriends

who loved me and

drank with me

locked me in closets

told racial jokes and

then apologized

We drank gin and tonic

and roamed the streets

looking for trouble

because it never did seem to come to us.

I was white

yes

I was white

and I wore torn blue jeans and tie dye

I listened to the Rolling Stones

and Lynard Skynard

I lived the words and knew the pain they held.

When I was white I dreamed of being

Old Home’s Day Queen

at the county fair

where music was real

and women wore cowboy boots

I had my Stetson and my

Buck knife

I danced the two step

and played Bingo on Saturday nights

when I was white I loved a man

named Cincinnatuss who drove a Harley

flew colors, and lived in West Virginia

we drank every type of liquor all

mixed up into one

we danced to country music

and fell out the door when it was time to go

when we fought

it was violent

but I loved him like I have never loved

I rode in fast cars listening to the WHO

asking "who are you?"

but I was white

I was

I was in on the secrets

the truths the lies

the only problem was

that people kept mistaking me for being

Hawaiian or Chinese

Palestinian

or Black

So I looked in the mirror and saw

my skin is brown

my hair is brown

my eyes are brown

and I wondered

where did god go wrong

because being a white girl

trapped in a Black body

is no small mistake

and the stress was beginning to take its toll.

you see even though Van Morrison sang

Brown Eyed Girl

I knew there was more to it than that

because didn't nobody really

seem to want to marry me

and not many people really took

me seriously

and for some reason

I just didn't seem to fit,

older I got-

no matter how much I drank.

So, I killed her

I killed that white girl that I once was

I stopped her life

cut it short with one clean swipe

no more Led Zeppelin

no more white boyfriends

no more dreams of making my brown eyes blue

But I was a white girl once

you wouldn't know it by looking

that once dreamed of drinking vodka

straight while laying back on a pool table

tattoo on my ankle that said

property of......

 For the Women- 

Slave Dungeons, Cape Coast, Ghana

For the women who decided to jump

For the women whose bodies became

Collateral

For women who chose to use our bodies to survive

For women who had no choice

Whose bodies were used

Dragged over stone and splintered dry docks

For women who walked long miles

Feet cracked and caked with

Dirt of their homelands

For women who could not walk any longer

For the women who suffered in darkness

For women who chose freedom

Women who aspired to light

For women who chose love

Who bit their tongues until they bled

For women who hid seeds in our hair

For women who gave birth in the middle passage

For women who lost children, for women who

Kept the children of others who were lost

For the women who carried a hoe

For the women who carried a baby

And a hoe

For women who held on to songs

Burning in their mouth

Spitting out language and were beaten

For women whose breasts were violated

Shivering and unclean

For women whose minds broke

For women who chose to survive

Women who chose to forget and

Those who remained silent

For the salty scars we bear

For women who had never seen the sea

And women whose hands turned the

Water into healing magic

For women who brought culture in the crooks

Of their ashy elbows

Woman whose tears became healing salve.

This poem is for the women.

how to stop |

      ____

protocol

______________ like teachers..like child predators..like sex offenders

{rules and regulations … lists} |

16 (only) killed in Cote d’Ivoire terror attack- someone tried to stop it|

__________________________________________________---------|

                                          afraid to get out of the car|

are we at war?

                                                                               When?

                                                                               but he was

                                                                               white | she was a girl |

endorsed by NRA..Border Patrol..Brothers in Blue |

my daughter’s platelet count in DC | she’s black|

                                                                               shot in my neighborhood yesterday-

                                                                               (not the first time so why does it matter

                                                                               now?)

It always mattered.

Matter always Black. 90’s seemed so simple when it was just black on black

I never thought blue on black was bluer that blue

black and blue- as Day says- what did I do?

__________________________________________________________________

Why do Black People Protest?

Black people have always fought for this country

Fought for

Fought this country

For fought for

This country

Fought

Alongside whites occupying spaces of shadow

My grandfather’s hat and gun, crossbow, spurs

Twinkle in his matted eye. Hair like a buffalo

Soldiers

In the bedroom too is silence

The stop the choking gall to aspire towards light.

Of course a synthetic illusion of freedom.

Please hold my blistered cotton hand, love.

Open the door, there’s a baked ham on the front table.

But to sacrifice my happiness to hatred

What for? Am I obligated too, to pay

Price paid so many times over?

Arms weary from carrying the sign post

Pinched nerves in the back of the spines

1. I AM A WOMAN

*Previously Published in Berkeley Times

Harmattan

Sun bleeds through the dust of dusky

Evening commute.

Blood of the orb cuts

clouds and din.

Penetrating every reassurance

is certainty you are gone.

Tires roll on oil slick of melted tarmac.

They say it is the cold season, but I sweat.

Wind pulls illness into our throats.

Stifled by this loss-

Shrouded in Memory

 America I’m Leaving You

You didn't think I would do it, did you?

You with your endless stream of illusion Nexflixing me from

portal to portal

Talking dirty in the double mattress bed

Mcdonalds, Mcdonalds, Starbucks

Hamburger, hamburger

Things only you know about me

Styrofoam

Plastic cups

Skipping the recycle bin

You !

My addiction to you was clear

how you pulled me by the hair

pushing your boot in my back

targeting my sacred hiding places

Gunning my children down

America, You make me sick

And yet I keep loving you

Don’t underestimate me

because I made you who you are

Cotton gin

I gave you everything

thought I would never leave

the bricks of the white house

the plantations

sugar honey sugar baby tar roads stoplights

You feared I would take it all back

Well- guess what

you can have it

But me? I’m leavin

Leaving for those so called backwards shithole places that

you dragged me out from

thought you rescued me from an abusive father

only to drown me in patriarchy

Don’t try to lure me back

With your $25 off Macy’s cards

Groceries, shopping malls and ice cream museums

No way, I’m outta here

to my own blackness

my own wilderness

without electricity or running water

without toilets and multiple cars

I don't need a house that smells like pine sol

I don’t need cherries picked from slave labor

I am taking back my middle passage

Getting on a ship and flying home to Africa

America, we’re through

Previously Published in Black Fire this Time