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Poetry

Hawk-Man

  I’m a man who believed that I died twenty years ago, and I live like a man who is dead already. — Malcolm X  The still eyes of Malcolm X, stilled by an f-stop and shutter. Winter, 1965. Malcolm is leaving a car, gel [...]

Crossing

Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched

Color

Up ahead it’s white. Snow animal,
I’m running at your back. I’ve failed to tell you
I’ve been hungry all this time, to tell you 

p r i d e

Give me memories as 

slow to leave as snails. 

 

In foreign    and perhaps 

fragile years    I’ll still be able 

He, Pronoun

Everywhere I look I see him,
I have a right to fear for him, 

though I have no right to claim his color.
His blackness is his to own and what will

my mouth say of that sweetness.

Creation Myth

I’m without body but forming in the latticework 

of blood cell and fret. Each threat pulls me upward

tempting and building me until my spine lifts into a column,

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