are you a boy or a girl, her niece asks, and I turn to smoke,
watch the wilted / sun
gallop / from the trees
planted / on my chin
my body / a vortex
my body / an echo
my body / set out
in the lake / this tomb
of chest / hair and broken
teeth / her voice / a shower
of pebbles / before the wind
puts on / a dress
and carries my breasts / out to sea
I wake my wife with mulberry lips,
I wake my wife with mulberry lips,
smelling of sweat and spring
before children’s screams
pull us from our sleep
We wrangle them like buffalo
drop them at school before work
chuckling at their plans to brag
about 2 mommies and 2 left shoes.
Wait, where is
your right shoe, Aria?
We forgot
to check her shoes
this morning
fuck
dezireé a. brown is a Pushcart Prize-nominated, black queer woman poet, scholar, and sjw, born and raised in Flint, MI. They are the winner of the Betty Stuart Smith award from the University of Illinois in Chicago, where they are currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English. They were a Quarterfinalist in the 5th Annual Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship, often claiming to have been born with a poem written across their chest. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Berkeley Poetry Review, BOAAT, Anomaly, Bayou Magazine, and the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: A Poetry Anthology, among others. They tweet at @deziree_a_brown
