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  Contents

  A Few Words

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  Add your Voice

  Poets

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  publisher's note

  This eBook is best viewed at smaller font settings on your device.

  a few words

  Shut up and sit down. New Age be damned if the old do not heed the voice and concerns of the young. Here are the voices of many, woven into one. If each face is a book, here is a testament: the groundplan of a social network. Here are our fears, disbeliefs, visions, and wishes welded into words. Here is our love, our desires, sprung from the incessant chatterbox of our adolescence. Here is the voice of the un-dead and the un-­compromised. Make no tradition of this. We have had enough.

  moderato cantabile

  1

  blah blah hard-hitting

  first line.

  some bullshit about where I’m at.

  connecting it

  to something

  seemingly irrelevant.

  elevating a combination

  of mundane thoughts

  to the epic.

  ask a question

  to throw everyone off.

  explain the past

  in terms acceptable

  to the present.

  challenge the present

  to re-consider

  its coping mechanisms.

  blame myself in the process.

  free myself in the blame.

  write about

  all that I’m going to do about it.

  run the risk of being condescending.

  get dangerously close

  to threatening.

  shrug off rejection,

  secretly expecting acceptance.

  not saying anything about it,

  as the next line

  disarms with the word, ‘poop,’

  put in a creative context.

  feel accomplished for typing,

  not trying.

  get tired

  of thinking what comes next.

  insert trademark

  unconsciously.

  wonder how much more

  before I can stop

  and go back to the luxury

  of lifestyle.

  prepare the rationale

  that denies the distraction.

  write down

  whatever it takes

  to not think

  the word waste.

  end with superiority complex

  wrapped in

  the cleverest thing

  they done ever did

  heard.

  2

  At the end of your ten-day meditation retreat

  you got in your car

  drove thirty peaceful feet

  and ran over a bird,

  splayed its holy guts on the pavement

  like god finger-painting fuck you

  across that deep breath

  you were holding

  the way your mother held her first born.

  You, thank goodness,

  were torn from the bible

  the day before they burned it

  for the verse about dancing to tambourines.

  Once

  you saw the blood of Christ on a knife

  carving redwood trees into church pews.

  Now every Sunday morning

  you hear glaciers melting

  and you see the feathers in your rearview mirror

  scattering like prayers

  searching for a safe place to land.

  Hold me to my word

  when I tell you I will leave today,

  catch a bus ticket west

  just to stand in the center of your highway

  stopping traffic ’til every feather’s answered.

  I’ve seen too many prayers

  caught in the grills of eighteen-wheelers.

  And folks like us, we’ve got

  shoulder blades that rust in the rain,

  but they’re still G sharp

  whenever our spinal chords are tuned

  to the key of redemption.

  So go ahead world, pick us

  to make things better.

  You wanna know what the right wing never got?

  We never question the existence of god.

  What we question is his bulldozer

  turning Palestine into a gas chamber.

  What we question is the manger in Macy’s

  and the sweatshops our children call the North Pole.

  What we question is the idea of a heaven

  having gates.

  Have you never stood on the end of a pier

  watching the moon live up to her name?

  Have you never looked in the eyes of a thief

  and seen his children’s hungry bellies?

  Some days my heart beats so fast

  my ribcage sounds like a fucking railroad track

  and my breath is a train I just can’t catch.

  So when my friends go filling their lungs with yes,

  when they’re peeling off their armor

  and falling like snowflakes on your holy tongue, God

  collect the feathers.

  We are thick skin

  covering nothing but wishbones.

  Break in. You’ll find

  notebooks full of jaw lines

  we wrote to religion’s clenched fist.

  Yeah, we bruise easy.

  But the sound of
our bouncing back

  is a grand canyon full of choir claps

  and our five pointed stars

  have always been open to the answer,

  whatever it is.

  Look me in the bullseye,

  in the laws I broke

  and the promises I didn’t,

  in the batteries I found when the lights went out

  and the prayers I found when the brakes did too.

  I’ve got this moment

  and no idea when it will end,

  but every second of this life

  is scripture.

  And to know that, trust me,

  we don’t need to be born

  again.

  3

  i begin in a rude place praying awkwardly

  my body is ugly. and a consequence of silence.

  i watched myself being born

  i came from crocodile mouths,

  i swam thru the bronx of my mother’s belly

  she married those cracks in bible passages. her jesus-witch-brew

  cried a liquid city between thighs and blurred

  bookcases until a heartbeat broke

  centuries

  a noisemaker spat and bled thru his golden horn.

  a poet held me down on a bed.

  this is old news, all the stethoscopes have told it before

  silence is scary.

  i watch the singing ones and i want to move in their throats

  and i want to sleep in them and wake

  and not be so scared allthetime.

  i don’t want to talk about the kissing ones or the ones who are smaller than their mouths who die in the middle of the street and how small children are chastised for wanting to touch them. who are the lullaby god’s Worst . . . or the funksmell that follows them across bridges and beneath breasts and powders armpits with their crying.

  if i could tell you i love you in a language where fear didn’t exist

  i know

  i would remember the earth as a piece of my chest

  4

  I.

  you kiss my breasts

  and the blood gathers beneath my skin just to be near you.

  becomes the place i bathe you

  a shimmering mineral pool of diamonds and berries

  oshun’s honey and magnolia blossoms in bloom.

  this is my dream . . .

  i am a mermaid

  you—

  on the shore cutting watermelon

  you—

  feeding me

  you—

  rubbing oil into my hot body.

  you and i

  a river running through us.

  II.

  this was me before you—

  mouth wide in the arkansas lapping the waves

  that flowed from your hands.

  my feet in the river

  pressing blessings through rocks and mud

  sending godlove anointed water to you.

  i prayed for you—

  through lotawatah/ and tenkiller/

  and eufala/ bird creek.

  deep fork.

  through waters surrounded by land and air. open sky.

  through lakes and rivers who’d heard rumors

  of the sight of the sea.

  how the very presence of it will

  drop

  you

  to

  your

  knees.

  i sang your ship to me

  sang the siren song that was in my belly the first time I saw your face

  your eyes

  the unbearable beauty of you.

  come to me come to me come to me come to me come to me

  if you had sailed away from me . . .

  if you had sailed away from me

  i would have died on this rock

  fish falling through my fingers like sighs.

  you listened to me-

  through the altamaha/ and the ohoopee/

  the ogeechee.

  the flint/ocmulgee/the mighty chattahoochee.

  your heart and soul swimming to me.

  and now?

  there is nothing else that sustains me.

  sweet soft. a quick/lick from a sugared spoon.

  III.

  your rivers are georgia pines deeper than green.

  the liquor in a pot of collards. a smoky bone.

  the tip of your tongue in my mouth.

  taste the salt of my tears.

  you are macon mud rich

  a frozen rock

  in a hot spot.

  me

  breaking through to the core.

  my rivers are sky and sky and sky

  a little golden girl barefoot on the creek plains

  arms reaching to the sky/waiting for the storm

  giggling with the wind and the rain.

  a perfect peach.

  my outstretched hand holding for you a single drop of dew.

  IV.

  i am the fish that swims both ways in the river.

  -they say because i’m not sure of my direction.

  -i say because i wanted you to catch me.

  you are the land that barely breathes.

  -they say because no one had watered your garden

  -you say because you were waiting for me to soak into your soil.

  we are the trickle the sprinkle the geyser the gush

  the creek the crawl the river the wider the ocean the awe . . .

  -they say it’s because opposites attract.

  -we swirl in our whirlpool and laugh at the moon.

  5

  The moon prowls ’round

  stalking at a distance.

  She is a tank.

  Her silent rumblings—

  pass through no-man’s land and

  rattle our atmospheres,

  the crust; blue surges,

  neap and ebb,

  bend outward our walls

  till tiding break

  the fasted lines

  and we awake

  to wave our sullied underclothes

  up feebly

  at the sky.

  6

  And so what that we sewed lashes on the eyelids of the moon?

  dilated the sky’s cervix and climbed high inside Her womb

  In June, I was Oshun, and I applied the night’s perfume

  to the hollow of my collarbone and invited him to prune

  away the shadow shroud I plied upon my loom

  And so what that we ignited violet branches in my room?

  shook the blooms asunder, blanched the thunder with our tune

  We were titans hiding in the shrubs that line the tomb

  of Babylon, playful in our nakedness we prattled

  daft about how craftily we painted parallaxes

  I watched him raptly humming he’d already won the battle

  contemplating atoms and his brandied Adam’s apple

  But no matter had we splattered the canvases of Saturn

  built pyramids on Pluto, or graffitied Venus caverns

  He sees me no cosmic sovereign though I jewel his crown with stars

  A glitterfaced infatuate catching drinks slid down the bar

  So no matter that we flattered ourselves splinters of the fracture

  between the ribs of Eden and the breath of heaven’s blackbirds

  I am gigglethroated gloater straddling to ease his backhurts

  licking ligaments and knees ripped on the edge of April’s laughter

  And so what that I refuse to glue back the glass that shattered?

  I am prismskinned remembrance staining days with my refraction

  7

  We are all mirrors

  We speak outbursts & job interview

  Logos on our tongues

  One movie quote away from laughter

  One text message away from crying

  Lips riddled with bilingual subtitles in the language

  from a world we are not from

  In thee
business of selling the priceless

  Merchants of imagination

  Only good @ what we’re good @

  Only want 2 go where we never been without leaving our homes

  Occupied without occupations

  Believe in books from a time we didn’t live in that break belief into fractions

  And All we are left with is long division

  Down the middle

  The heart is a riddle

  Perspectives a weapon

  Out of shape

  Exercising ego till it looks like confidence

  Confined 2 where our pasts have been

  Late 2 a meeting with our futures

  Instruments out of tune creating our own time signatures

  Out of key

  But open 2 becoming our own favorite songs

  Dreams sound better when unexplained

  Clouds look nicer when you’re not flying through them

  Facial features feature our parents’ flaws

  Microscope your every breath

  Look closer

  How many lives do you see?

  How many lives do you live in a day?

  Paralyzed by the thought of who we will be when we are not here

  Is being ahead of your time choosing 2 be a non-factor in thee now

  Juggling questions like the answers are up 2 us

  Gravitating 2 a place with less of it

  Look at me looking at you when looking @ me

  How do we look?

  We ignore each other because we don’t have anything left 2 say after hello

  Unsure of what beauty is anymore

  We look in mirrors 4 a story we’ve never seen before

  Ask stars questions we are the answers 2

  We are flowers beautiful without ever seeing a picture of ourselves

  Watered by the moments we love ourselves

  Caught in

  We love we

  we love us nots

  What is more beautiful than we?

  We are hellos we’ve never met

  Faith without church

  Fear unlearned

  Life without worlds

  poetry without words

  8

  poems about birchwood are bullshit

  unless forests of mercantilists burn

  tied to tree trunks, skin smoldering

  trail of dental records, inheritance

  in flames motherfuckers

  kicked in the nuts postulating posturing

  tweed tenure track post-poetry imposters,

  we want poems that dance around the ear,

  machete and tech 9 pressed against the temple

  poems that will kill someone / tonight—demigods

  false idols, crack Donald’s Hall of mirrors

  no horses head genocide just assholes

  squeezing gates of definition tighter. they

  never get fucked. they only give department head:)