2018 Walter Glospie Academy of American Poets Prize

 

 

You wandered the foothills of your prime and

prufrocked across the wasteland with your hair slicked

back like ravines and the Dominican cats would 

call you from their stoops like hola, mami and 

you seemed to yourself a terror so you looked away and

somewhere uptown,

all the girls with names like Garcia

buy themselves flowers from the bodegas and

all the brown boys with red lollipops between white teeth are

sluts for erasing their own histories and 

Diddy Bop begging them to 

when the pigs cruise by

to remind them that their skin is a dangerous thing and the word 

                                                                                   "Slaughterhouse"

is titanic in their mouths, sirens

swelling as loud as monsoon rain and the 

                                                                                                  thunder

that follows.