Children

I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy's garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage
and lots of
barbecue
and buttermilk
and homemade ice-cream
at the church picnic

and listen to
gospel music
outside
at the church
homecoming
and you go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only...

For someone to read a poem
again, and again, and then,

having lifted it from page
to brain—the easy part—

cradle it on the longer trek
from brain all the way to heart.

My sister found them.
 
Read them out loud.
She’s so proud,
 
she’s running to our parents
waving my poems in the air.
 
Doesn’t she know 
she’s waving my underwear?

The best clouds in the business
          are right above me
right now.

We’re riding in this teal convertible
          those clouds just dozing
          in about forty-nine different shapes
       ...

When my dad walks
into a room,
or down
the street,
he inches
up on me
silent
as shadow,
and I don't know
he's there
until I feel
his hug.
Sometimes
when he is
near
I might even
hear
his heart beat—
but never
his quiet
feet.

Up till now,
the math of my life
has been pretty simple:
friends
plus family
plus sports.
What more
could I ask for, right?
But lately,
my outside has been changing
and my inside keeps telling me
more is on the way.
Trouble is,
I'm not sure
I'm ready.

i look in the mirror, and all the chips i’ve eaten
this month have accumulated
like schoolwork at the bottom of my tummy,
my belly—a country i’m trying to love.
my mouth is a lover devoted to you, my belly, my belly
the birds will...

I am a door of metaphor
waiting to be opened.
You’ll find no lock, no key.
All are free to enter, at will.
Simply step over the threshold.
Remember to dress for travel, though.
Visitors have been known
to get carried away.Illustration by Shadra Strickland

I am hardly ever able
to sort through my memories
and come away whole
or untroubled.
It is difficult
to sift through the stones,
the weighty moments and know
which is rare gem,
which raw coal,
which worthless shale or slate.
So, one by one,
I drag them across the page
and...

I come home,
feet about to bleed
from angry stomping.
“Boy!” says Mom.
“Quit making all that racket.”
But what does she expect
when, day after day,
haters sling words at me
like jagged stones
designed to split my skin?
I retreat to my room,
collapse on the bed,
count, “One. Two....

We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for...

My body is
perfect and
imperfect and
black and
girl and
big and
thick hair and
short legs and
scraped knee and
healed scar and
heart beating and
hands that hold and
voice that bellows and
feet that dance and
arms that embrace and
my momma’s eyes and
my daddy’s smile and
my grandma’s hope and

my body...

Imagine the lunchroom,
crowded and wary—
seating charts a welcome apprehension.

Loose-leaf
papers spiraled from
ballpoint-scratched notebook covers
until the last hour,
when a teacher
sighed and sighed.

Today, we close our backpacks,
but minutes
come quick and quit
the ease of dawn.

It turns out you can kill the earth,
Crack it open like an egg.
It turns out you can murder the sea,
Poison your own children
Without even thinking about it.

Goodbye passenger pigeon, once
So numerous men threw nets over trees
And fed you to pigs....

Turn off the lights.
Wear another layer.
(Sounds like a dad.)
(Sounds like a mom.)

You say hand-me-down.
I say retro.

Walk.
Bike.
Walk some more.
Recycle.

(See what I did there,
bike—recycle?)

Your name in Sharpie
on a good water bottle.
Backpack. New habits.
No thanks, don’t need a bag.

What else.
Oh yeah.

Tell ten friends
who...

curve and swoosh
of wondrous white
brushstroked black
the throat and wings

modest cap of scarlet

stretch and flap
a regal span
dance romance
on chopstick legs

elegant and awkward

nest and stalk
between the mines
screech and whoop
past endless loops

of  shining razor wire

They ignored the new boy,
snickering behind his back.

                                                    In silence, I stayed     safe.
   ...

Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to...