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Poetry

dezireé a. brown

By September 25th, 2020No Comments

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