words and sounds

little Black boys
and harvesting light.

and finding footing and “risking limb”

along the stream, adventure and play

little black boys play.

and awe dragonflies and claim

the ravine a tiny triumph

little Black boys scream “ONWARD!”

look like treetops, dreadlocks branching out 

moss green headtops

they make elder trees somehow wiser

and take heed where needed

always

little Black boys scan danger

calculate the thrill, make amends with the risk

then leap

“ONWARD!”, Onward

into the evergreen.

(Published in Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics, Routledge 2019 )

A Letter for Auntie Lorde

yesterday I believe you

came to me in the form of a

woman at a podium telling me

tough skin is an ivory fallacy

in this tower stay, Tender

stay soft enough to long it is

the stuff of protest

when I was 17,

you told me I was

and that was enough and I believe you

but I am tired, I am a loud and angry tired

always wanting more,

draining from the weight of false

inquiry and individualism

faster than my age would tell

I wonder how far our promises of

new imaginings can carry me when I am so very soft

and I hold this unquantifiable longing still

this place aches a hostile womb for my old magic

my accomplishments caress the question

of cost and I remember the balm, your voice

telling me to hold tight to Dahomey

where we exist in a plane beyond

the gatekeepers’ myths of knowing,

that this softness gifts my passage.