Selected Works

Know you want to beat a man out of me.
Strike & smith me into a suit of chain-mail
tailored to my bones. Still I'll find peace
playing coy within my womanly mane.

Know you want to lug me into maledom, to
chain me ‘twixt gender & light-blackness.
You crave my colour but not my maelstrom—
my enby body reduced to fraction.

Know you want to go back before pronouns
& play pretend about your gay loved one.
It’s easier to ignore muffled sounds
& stick onto tradition as one loves.

Know you want to beat a man out of me,
two-fifths man, two-fifths woman, one-fifth me.

English was a business to be deployed:
"show'em to read an' see how far they run
then shoot a leg out from under one.
Leave the rest to carry our wəyd."

The youngest of the tribe promised return
here and to her later-museumed tongue:
“me brek fi chains, den mi a-go Jamdung;
real yard dere— collie ev'rywhere yuh turn,

like Zion! None cyan test I-an'-I,
loyal tuh di Lord Of Lords Almighty,
Him- a aid us in beatin' massa-eye!
Smite massaclot dey wid crucial lightning.

Me have fe go learn more of dis 'English'
dat di demon dem conjured pon a wish."

Yuh gots to put some meat on dem bones!
Hon, plop anotha slab on dem bones.

Put dat gab to work and git to chompin'
shells of crab on dem bones.

'Til yuh can whistle tru yer teet' and
yuh build scabs on dem bones,

keep on eatin'. Even if deh roof of your mouf
is bleedin', yew best break fast on dem bones.

A real man makes muscle, my boy.
Real-man makes the gym his lab for dem bones.

Don't-cha wanna be a real man?
To become what yuh was born as in dem bones?

What'd I do wrong to have a fake-man for a boy?
Evr'y day I pray to Ahab for dem bones

to grow big, so we can stop callin' yew Flaco an'
put yew up fer sale to run a tab on dem bones.

My classmates used to tattle tales on the projects.
They'd call it the slums. Don't make no mess in the projects,

they'd say, show-and-telling all the fables their parents fed them.
Heard there ain't nothin' but stress in the projects.

The first housing projects in the States, Harlem River Houses,
was an experiment, hence "the projects."

Alongside the Harlem River erected the Williamsburg Houses,
which allowed only white residents in their projects.

We don't talk about Williamsburg here. In the Harlem River,
it's hard to make sense of time in the projects:

everything touched becomes a fragment of history.
Living on a historical artifact makes time-less in the projects.

When I'd return home from college, or lovers,
I always had confidence in the projects—

that it would not change its ways, no how—
in 2020, a new development came for the projects.

Giants crashed into the brick buildings.
They ate the bricks of the projects.

They uprooted the land and forced it out of the past.
One day, an outside tribe set up tent in the projects.

They came for the two-bedroom tenants, and I did not speak out,
because I was not a two-bedroom tenant in the projects.

Then they came for Ana, and found one of her sons instead,
holding the line until eviction came to get them up out the projects.