The Zen priest says I am everything I am not.

In order to stop resisting, I must not attempt to stop resisting.

I must believe there is no need to believe in thoughts.

Oblivious to appetites that appear to be exits, and also entrances.

What is there to hoard when the worldly realm has no permanent vacancies?

Ten years I’ve taken to this mind fasting.

My shadow these days is bare.

It drives a stranger, a good fool.

Nothing can surprise.

Clarity is just questioning having eaten its fill.

and God said Let there be light
and we stood before the sun
shed the daylight from our selves
and donned dusk

God said Let there be light
and a moth emerged
from my molasses-black chrysalis

God said Let there be light
and we became
our blackest selves

God said Let there be light
and we became our own gods

God said Let there be light
and from the shade we watched
the sky shine her brightest

Let there be light
and day became
seemingly so

Let there be light
and night was never so black

Let there be light
and flesh became skin

and skin became colored

and the light was let in the house

and the cotton rose in the fields

and the master’s tools took shape

and an ocean kept us apart

and the indigo washed the coastline

and blue-black hands worked their fingers to the bone

and the rivers teemed with teeth

and barks ran through the woods

and the days grew darker

and the heavens rose beyond our reach

and God’s absence became apparent

and smoke poured over the mountain’s edge

and the fields filled with fire

and there was light

The air tonight is a nesting 
doll. The call of cicadas 
around the sound of bird 
settling into nest around 
the rustling of something 
beyond the yard in the 
leaves around the smell 
of jasmine around the 
giving away of consciousness 
that surrounds 
what might be the last 
of the day’s worries or 
the start of the night’s 
fears. How often is it, 
after a pandemic and 
during climate rages, 
to have a seed of fear 
stuck into our teeth, a pea 
beneath our mattress. 
So perhaps the jasmine 
masks decomposition 
that will bloom in tomorrow’s 
sun. Perhaps the distant stirring 
is a coyote that will take 
the neighbor’s cat in its jaw 
and shake. Perhaps even 
the night air carries virus. 
What’s calming in the world 
has always been a mask. Ask 
the remains of a small child 
found in a cave in Siberia with 
tooth marks in bone. Ask 
the child’s mother, long dissolved 
into breath distributed across 
the globe and water long traveled 
to the ocean. Ask that nesting bird 
so weary it doesn’t hear 
the neighbor’s cat. Who 
are we rooting for on this earth?

My mama got a sugarcane smile
Southern sweetened iced tea hint
of lemon in her kiss—my mama
loved me like home cooked meals

Slow roasted conversations left overs
in the corners of my mind like I remember
she gave me Cheese Curls like teething rings
to place between my gums and satisfy crying

She Twizzler twisted my thick hair
with globs of blue magic—make me Sunday-fresh
My skin hot fudge, she caramel at best
My mama—corn bread and cola,

Candied yams and cabbage, banana pudding and cobbler
Food so good on the taste buds—make her feet swell
She wobble sometimes like pendulums
on grandma’s clock that do tell time.

Learned it from all the times great gran
was cooking for church’s second service
Learned to praise God through baked
mac and cheese and pray my daddy come home

from the service, but he dead and gone now
and my mama in combat mode — her body
covered with infections like chocolate coated
candy. Sugar level–501–which is to say
she got stroke caught in between her teeth

A1C, 14, veins constricting then collapsing
like salivating glands when you taste that cheesecake
that’s too rich and saccharine
My mama so sweet its sickening

They had to cut cyst out of her breast
like she had cavities within her chest
and I’m scared that if she don’t water down
the syrup in her spirit they will amputate
her limbs and ligaments leaving her bitter
to the taste—all sour in the face
where salty tears replace the stars that twinkle
and burst in my mama’s iris, my mom is

hot cocoa when my soul grows cold from all the pain
in the world, all gummy bear dimples and a heart
made of pecan swirls. My mama got a crockpot-type-hug
that fills the house with aroma. My mama fills me up

every time I’m around her. My mama is a recipe passed down
through generations and I just pray my children will have full plates
before she is called to grace—Amen. Pray her eyes will not be candy
wrapper shut before she ever has a chance to meet them.

But my mama be stubborn like Jawbreakers sometimes
So I make pools of apologies hoping she will forgive
me enough to take care of herself, but this aint no candyland-
child’s play and though disease is hard for anyone to swallow
this aint no sugar pill placebo cuz we know diabetes won’t just go away

And still my mama be like Baby everything gon’ be ok
My mama with her smile made of sugarcane
as I can’t help but fear the decay.