“Who would believe that you loved me? / Who would believe that you kept my name? ”

“Even forest fires have a season.”

my existence in this world is whole and unafraid

I don’t want the Nobel prize.
I want to be like my Uncle Moe.

the statute of limitations is up on all of my crimes...I hope

“If the Black world is lost, if our love world ain’t love,
if the unheard, unshaken Black word is freedom,
where is the world you knead off our skulls?”

“Engage in mutual aid. Educate each other. Challenge the greedy.”

“my younger brother gets hold of a gun for the first time / he begins to wish for a duel with a seven-eyed ghost”

The next expedition

The moment when a stranger reaches out

“alive & determined to live, all the way to the unfathomable depths”

the first question

“Men got the credit, but I continue to spin.”

“o, my silent complicity,
o, your silent complicity.

o, our villainy in loving
what chooses to do ill”

a poetry reading on the porch

“I know when I say I’m nonbinary
the first thing people do
is look at my beard”

“Tis the season to be
proud, to trade our silent nights
for this holy loud.”

“i am the daughter
of swords”

“here
the night
is a blade”

“I cannot be silent in the silence.”