Black Day

Don’t remember which
Black Day was my first
Just the setting aside
The segregation, if you will
Of this one day
A sneak preview of
Black Month

My cynicism came later

After I’d learned
Their pale stories,
His story seemed^{1, 2, 3}

My cynicism came later

I don’t know when
Black Days will end
Don’t know when
We’ll integrate
Into brown colors
Bleeding through

A calendar still to come


¹Accidental
²Afterthought
³Footnote

I See You

You open the door and you reach inside. Inside your mailbox, there is a package. You remove this package and take it up the stairs. Entering your home, you set the package that used to be in your mailbox on top of the kitchen counter.

You turn around, opening your refrigerator, removing two eggs from their carton placed on the top shelf. You crack the eggs into a skillet, their jaundiced gaze tracking your movements across the kitchen as you gather seasonings to sprinkle in their yellow eyes and make them run.

The package sits on the kitchen counter waiting for you to grab a sharp object and slice into it, peeling back the tape, ripping off its paper skin. Inside the package, still on the kitchen counter, opened with the knife that's still in your hand, you find two eyes looking up at you. There's no movement for them to track, as you stand, fixed in place, engaged in one of those staring contests from childhood.

The note to the side of the eye on the left, the eye that's the same brown as your lover's, reads, "I can love you now, with all your flaws."

You reach out to your lover's eyes and take one in each egg-grimed fist, and hold them to your chest, thinking, "Perhaps these eyes can hear my heart beating faster at being so loved."

Righteous Reunion

You are ready to greet death
Monstrous barbarities all past
Only one future atrocity remains:
The offense granted by
Your loosened bowels
As you swing pendulously

There was a time you flew
Your face emblazoned
On banners borne on desert winds
Crowds chanted your name

Only taunts meet you now
A dissonant counterpoint
To your mumbled prayers
Recited much too late

The noose is placed
A rope ring promising
An eternity together:
With one grandson
Martyred with your own
Two, meeting you at death