^{For Valentine}

my girl positioned for a twerk session-

             knees bent, hands below the thigh, tongue out, head

turned to look at her body’s precession. 

she in tune. breath in. breasts hang. hips freshen. 

            she slow-wine. pulse waistline to a beat bled

for her, un-guilt the knees for the session.

fair saint of vertebrae- backbone blessing,

            her pop- in innate. her pop- out self- bred,

head locked into her holied procession. 

dance is proof she loves herself, no questions-

            no music required, no crowd needed. 

she arched into a gateway, protecting-

this dance is proof she loves me, no guessing. 

            a bronx bedroom, we hip-to-hip threaded. 

she turn to me, tranced by her possessin’. 

she coils herself to, calls forth a legend-

round bodied booty, bounce a praise ballad.

she break hold, turn whole in a twerk session. 

body charmed, spell-bent, toward progressing.

Hushed whispers in an undisclosed room

            Take it out of the girl

a child, boyish in nature             their smallness magnified.

Outcasted—the soft bodied animal you are

determined unruly animalia,

                                                   what survives inflation & inertia?

The body is a set of complex feedback systems

nothing is as it appears

                                                   the coexistence of a beard & breasts

                                                   evidence of the body’s willfully defiant nature

The body’s resilience amid the promise of perish:

                                              somehow the child survives their own hand

                                              the day’s weary edge inverted toward grace

A child, boyish in their nature           & barrel shaped

            survives sedimented against the residue

            of dunes, soil, leaf litter,       & the bodies of a lesser

What couldn’t be excised

            your boyish nature

            your untamed phylum,         your small heart pulsing loud

                                                        notes against the night.

In the house that is my body
a Black girl waves at the world
from her window. She can be 
safe here because the house
is cis assumed. I want to keep us 
& keep us safe, even if it means
I am cis assumed. My phantom
breasts that aren’t phantom breasts
but A-cups. I get so sick of them
not seeing the girl. I get so scared
they might see the girl. Safe 
derives from the Old French sauf
meaning protected, watched-
over, assured of salvation.
I am the watchtower for the girls
& their salvation. Let’s hear it for
the girls. About the invention of Black
femmes, is this what Spillers meant?
Am I? In the watchtower that is my body,
there is a door that leads to a legion
of ungone femmes. It’s safe inside
the girl for the others to stay.

& just the vermillion
flicker of cannas near the pane.
Our bodies too, plateaued;

my hole, newly bloomless.
Outdoors, further out, a wren
winnows, the mesquite

on whose yielding limbs the all-
but-tender fowl rests
flexes, in cold as in darkness . . .

Time, like desire, expands too—
no? My lover, nodding gently,
shakes the leaves, &

A little softer. A little softer now—
A little softer, for what’s been torn.

All I ever wanted to be was a song— 
something soft and light held in the mouth 
sung sweet beneath the coming dawn. 
I return to that first desire—its gingham blouse 

rubbed against the heavy pull of flesh hovered
in a dark that I can only recall as that dark.
I ask what grace awaits that tender tendril’s suffered
stretch of green wide enough to tear a stark 

light out from under a troubled sky? I return
to the center of that smallness and sing its wounds—
jagged rasp crooned until edged out and earned.
I was the only boi I knew dreaming in soft bruise. 

And it made me as beautiful as the blood’s slow sprawl
at my knee, right before punching a bullying boy to crawl.

sun beats
  wind leaps

blood memory

apocalyptic self-image crystallized affections of pious solace
                                         emptiness from this ceaseless war

I want to sin
against purity

bliss hovering above the void
haptic fallout feverish blood

sun beats down
wind leaps
blood memory
cheerful obscene boredom

angel
                     of
                                the
                                                   sun

                    singing with a hard fist
          life’s benevolent corruption
everything is hard against the tongue
everything dissolving
into otherworldly paradise
make heaven my home
I never learn my lesson

I was on a walk when I was struck by the precarity of the gender that wore me,
which moved my matter, wrote books, and fell in love. as a child, I scoured 

the forest for brittle cicada skins abandoned on trees. husks present differently now
a pair of nylons caught in the thicket, a beak surviving its decomposing bird, 

a mural of George Floyd with a purple cock spray-painted on his beryl cheek.
among these discreet mutilations, I pull a line of thought through flesh 

where a misled margin slept. I was uninhabitable before I snared a man
for his hide. I was not unlike the skin of a drum thriving under a stamina 

that made music of me before I split. you wouldn’t recognize me now
if you saw me in the trees, played out, scattered to the undergrowth. I took a life 

and returned it to scale and membrane. I foraged a life coated in plastic
and mud from the highway overpass. it reeked of wheatpiss and it was mine.

^{by HAUNTIE}

Body

A meeting place between the many times that came before it
These times, the trajectories that brought me to be here now

Body

A passing form
like a flower
the slowest moment of rupture in a single time

in time—body as memory
through time—body as home
with time—body as matter

i am body, yet i do not claim body
i never meant to sever with ink

What is the act of mark making, if not to define?
And what is definition, if not without exclusion?
What is exclusion, if not the cutting of matter?

The abstraction of cartography occurs
when the difference of parts is blurred
and lines are no longer visible
and place is not but visceral.

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
        In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
        To bend and barter at desire's call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!

Through the long night until the silver break
        Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
        Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.

Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
        Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
        The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.

The instructor said,

    Go home and write
    a page tonight.
    And let that page come out of you—
    Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you're older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.