And so, there are no balloons
No celebratory acts for humiliation
No mother’s day will come without shame
My daughter asking for her brother.
whose heart still beats loudly in her chest
she has no idea that a baby sits in the chestnut
coffin of her eyes
closed casket funeral each time she sleeps,
dreams so responsibly with her brother…

What do I say to my son?

You should have been born in March
with skin kissed into existence and
a collar bone like the father who went head to head
with you often,
we spoiled your time here…

And I can’t bring myself to lie with legs up,
fearful of inserted fingers ….
Baby, don’t think for a second I couldn’t feel the
hide and seek
Of you
rather drown than hold parents accountable, you
let me sleep at the edge of the bed, my womb will
wait for you to come home,
store food for your return, deprive the rest of me as
retribution for not
Screaming “yes” at your birth,

and I want there to be more poems like this
would carve you solid frame metaphors
despite being made of disposable incantations.
write finger nails raw,
those valuable lines; you
should have released me, excused my behavior a long
time ago
damn you for the inability to tip toe around this
silence

Brave heart I wish I were stronger,
And didn’t speak to your dad with all the passion
insecurity has to offer
I bet you believe in monsters,
And will be afraid of doctors and suction
I threw away my electric tooth brush, surely you would
have been confused the next lifetime

Thank you for sacrifice
Maybe, one day your father will call on you
With more apologizes and
Recognition of your life
I pray he’ll learn to treat you into memory,
Let the love poem stuck in his pen be for you
Maybe then, your smile will appear
Shadow your sister at her homecoming football game
Chestnut brown eyes blinking brightly of the
introduction to the blood
that is so familiar to yours…

The helicopters are flying low,
looking for the Nikes of missing girls from Bed-Stuy.
Hoping to see their feet in the air, soles to the sky,

lying on their backs for reasons other than death.
Forced to be whore and found, symbol they are alive.

They are lamp post sisters, whose eyes only meet at
night.
Who will tell their mothers that their futures look
trash bag grim?
Tell their fathers that a man like him, black as ink,
sexy like Africa, is torturing his baby into calling
him daddy?

I’m scared
just want to place a back pack atop my daughters head,

insurance that her mind will remain only on the book
Take images of bikini clad weeds, to her they were
once roses.
Don’t tell me that her dreams will be discarded like
her body,
I can’t handle her wearing red heels to school.

Fly the helicopters lower, cause although far in the
distance your sons are not exempt.
His eyes follow me in the train station, travel with
me everywhere.
Where they dump the bodies.
Where they find the bodies.
Where they use telepathy to locate severed heads.
Torso without spine.
They mutilate your sons,
give two warning shots to the head for your sons.
They son your sons,
make them good Christians,
make them walk with God… son

Tell your son that he too can be followed home.
Always been a big boy
No wonder he backed up the incinerator,
that doesn’t make him weak,
just proves that rigid bodies do not fold easily,
The cell phone you gave him as protection has been
recycled,
why you smell him during your conversations
He called when he got home, just as you requested.

Land the helicopters if you think outsiders are taking
our children
I doubt it. It is we who pray on we. We eat our young.
Why do you think the community is so silent?
Every one is too busy chewing.