Khadijah Queen

especially the rarest kind / or the kind named Priscilla G & not drowning in bleach cream / creamy spin / but spinning blades on a black Nina gunship in the gargantuan ghetto / not killing & maiming my brothers & potential husbands / when the working mothers give up & when they do not & when boys in their mad survivalist tactics want a movie sex parade / silk-edging their sweaty fists in 30 watt lit basements just because / death switch of a future / none of that has to do with any kind of blackness or a crazed horizon in the plumed summers of Los Angeles wherein television reenactments of real fathers didn't occur enough for news sidebars / but more than generally believed / they showed up to dailiness / cash in hand but as the school year revved up the rest of the madness had nowhere to hide / ballooned horizon / chemical concerns / fire up the blue turbines / fire up unconscious intention plus the acne of ignorance / on the city's glittery filth façade but not because of blackness / not for me / when I would get home sometimes there might be food sometimes just blackness I could live on / which I love

After Alejandra Pizarnik, after Fernando Pessoa i Comic screen to change what came to notice           Even though sky at first was the same blank slate     So literal. The value of  it You make your own lion’s teeth sink in, slowly ii The insects claim you don’t belong here then bite & bite Virtue the undulant yards as penance iii Hordes of animals without teeth crash the window in a dream & it means you are not hungry enough iv The capuchin stays silent in the void You feel the sun of  unknown experiments v Once a choice comes to full & the act carries the joy of struggle                       The winter mother severs only a chance at restarting. Could you sorrow the one unchosen thing infinitely so it feels occasional, the act is itself vi If  I write a texture I could make it stucco like childhood Aloe or cactus spines                      To cut is to heal the rough of a cut             All dark blue against good skin like leather vii Imagine the root of oppositional archetypes Next to me chrysanthemums the rust of  blood when it dries but in front of me So much blue & a broken white I can’t see myself on purpose viii What rocks itself  out of  time on a wingbeat Is not a name or a silence As in sanity’s meager gestures. Downriver, the unruly sound turned C-shaped / Real secrets as fragrant and familiar as what’s under the smoke ix I stand next to the rocks Where you choose to return without choosing / Some black, some silver The lines of ash & passage A neon swig of enlightenment x Don’t be exceptional in this false. All fluent in nothing, hiding where your debt grows Be aggressive or do not mind, you say I feel like a chicken after boiling Or like you do now — smooth from the pain (I love how you love promises because they are lies) (I love the honesty of cheap rings) Like a ripened plum or two, pitted — Now a flat middle ground, now another interior to hold the ruin xi Your hair grows in eighths on alternate days but you pretend not to count What rains in it What grandiose adornment hasn’t happened but will happen Also a lie — in color xii The grunting you hear on the other side of the wall might be music Or the disaster of a concrete floor The western cities, the eastern cities / that inscrutable skin I chose The high ground of resurrection Discursive — falling soft / I witness the guilt planted for others I practice by moving my legs I am a bracket You are the conquering seawall Nothing earth about you except what clean is visible Also your hands