This is for the cool in you. The low swag of you. The righteous fury and star-following urge in you. This is for my people, Black and praiseworthy. For all of us. My family, Nuyoricans, blown across the map by anger. My friends, practicing themselves in the mirror, trying on new moves, new colors, new tongues.
poetry
Untitled
You know that thing you did? It was wrong but it felt real. Did you leave marks? I know I did. Almost like signing your name on skin. It heals but not really, something tight happens behind words, hold this for me is how we say close the door.
The Fourth of July, a Pantoum
The flag like a curtain, a wizard behind it, counting money an idea colored red, colored white, colored blue of Americans cheering independence drunk and dancing around a fire, the smoke of war
The Declaration of Independence (or Thomas Jefferson Writes Your Break Up Letter)
When in the Course of human error, it becomes necessary for lovers to dissolve the emotional bond which had connected them, and to assume a tongue can tower over the earth and create a separate but equal sign over the Nature of Desire, a decent into the opinions of others requires one to declare the cause of separation.
Somebody Blew Up Poetry (for Amiri Baraka)
They say it’s some terrorist poet, some old man in Newark who burned his lips on America. They say he one of those radical blacks with an A-Rab name, Amiri Baraka.
Mikhail Kalashnikov, or, How to Honor the AK-47
Born a peasant, the Lt. General knew hunger and how bluish hands turned frozen soil, once he found a child’s skull, holed by a bullet in a field under a darkening sky. Kneeling beside it, he tried to hear the last word death utters as shadows cast by clouds passed over him, blacking the land like the boot prints of soldiers.
NICHOLAS POWERS 