I once saw Jazell Barbie Royale
Do Whitney Houston so well
I got upset with myself for sneaking
Past the cashier
After having been patted down. Security frisks you
For nothing. They don’t believe in trouble. They don’t
Imagine a gun or a blade, though
Sometimes they make you walk all the way back
To the car with the weed you didn’t tuck well.
No one’s at fault. That’s how they say it
Where I’m from. Everyone’s got a job.
I should have paid. Our women
Need to perform for the tips they couldn’t earn
After the state shut down for good reason
And too late. We lost so many friends.
My buddy Janir swears
He still can’t smell his lip balm. Our women need us
To call them beautiful
Because they are. They’ve done what they must
To prove it, and how often does any woman get
To hear the truth? Jazell is so pretty.
Whitney Houston is dead. No one wore a mask.
It wasn’t safe, so it wasn’t really free.
If you don’t watch me, I’ll get by you. I’ll take
What I’ve been missing. My mother says
That’s not how she raised me. I spent
A year and a half sure she’d die.
The women who lip sync for us could die.
People like to murder them,
And almost everyone else wonders
If they should be dead. Who got dressed looking
For safety today? Who got patted down? My mother
Says what we do is sin. But all we do
Is party. Even when I’m broke, I can
Entertain. You’re going to miss me some day.
You’re going to forget the words to your favorite song.
You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.
Copyright © 2021 by Jericho Brown. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 27, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
the train leaves the station without me / so does the bus / the sidewalks stay empty of my steps—the rushed ones, the ones pierced with pain, the its-too-late-at-night to still be walking ones / i keep my cash / it doesn’t load my metro card and then another card when the first one’s lost / i don’t panic in the car about leaving late—least not as much / when winter comes, i don’t sit on the cold, cold bench waiting and waiting, clutching a pair of my stockpiled hand warmers / i don’t bundle myself up in oppressive layers / or unravel in the late night, releasing the day’s pressure like a punctured balloon / instead i sit / and continue to sit / in this chair then that one / look out the window to escape the screen’s demands / wonder how i ever had fuel for those past travels / i rest / and i rise / and listen to the body that’s carried me here as it whispers the way forward
Copyright © 2021 by Camisha L. Jones. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
5 AM—the world is silent save for the heater
in the hallway, the cars wooshing
down the main road, the vibrato of
every single driver. Every creak of a settling
house. Lay my head down, press it into pillow.
On the window sill a jar of coins,
sunlight crawling through the
water in an empty spaghetti jar.
A spider settles itself into the warmth
of my house. Inside the body: ghosts
of IVs, needles, feeling
breathless in a hospital bed.
Somewhere inside my brain aware
of the machine pumping oxygen,
beeping, attached by wires to the chest.
In the chest, an animal. The animal
forgetting how: to howl, to crawl,
to find the words.
Copyright © 2021 by Margarita Cruz. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 18, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.