Black Fatherhood in the killing fields
is a sunrise kind of dying
December initiate
a kid is born
her convict picked like
mother stolen by the state
I drop to my knees and talk to God about child-rearing
Have you ever seen a baby rest their arms on fire
I want to call every time I’ve ever fired a gun a black dahlia
Pitching in with the dialects of fate
slave pit symmetries
the fevers of space
Spent the first three days waiting for you to laugh…you who can never break my heart
I sense God now
Monk and the infant
bide time
If wings come
bide distance
I can write in my heart only
sunset staggering to the corner
old folks plaiting solstices in the motel room
with years of fugitive daylighting
a white blues
when my stomach permits
I touch this prison
Talentless
Like a June loss of life
Love undecorated yet cliff dwelling
Like a tenement startled by peace
reminding me to watch my daughter dream
my stomach now sleeps all over the room
My daughter reading The Butterfly’s Burden to my ashes
My argument with the earth
like joy
An ancestor’s understanding of gunplay
like cousinhood
martyr confidant, I fell through the sun with you
like horn’s threshold
even the fire is only a ghost
I sense her tears now
This chapter is pleased and flowering for other worlds
Family is physical law
And every poet belongs in Gaza