Though it’s late
Though I should have done it long ago
Moving away from abuse
Emptying
Going back to the beginning
It’s frightening to start over
Reshape my own core
What I do have
What my mother and I share is an
Indomitable spirit
Just when you think it’s impossible/an obstacle can’t be overcome
There is me/there is my mother
As in a medical drama when you think the patient
has lost too much blood
Suffered too many wounds
There is me/there is my mother
It’s like an action drama
Where the hero fleeing a villain
Clings for life from a rooftop
Awaiting rescue/there is me/there is my mother.
MYSTI
My mother’s cat Mysti
Spelled M Y S T I
Doesn’t just walk/she strides
black cat/healthy fur/shiny coat looks like bat girl
It isn’t incidental, she is Black, a girl
The great survivor in my parent’s lineage of pets
She although six years old never stops playing and is my mother’s
constant sidekick
like me once but an involuntary one in card games and watching TV
yes this cat strides confident
has never known war or brutality
can’t and doesn’t ingest as humans do the daily injustices
another unarmed Black boy shot twenty times by police
Mysti doesn’t know the violation of girls
Hasn’t had her fur touched in peculiar ways
In fact I was surprised my parents picked her
Given their insanity, racism, and superstition
But she has brought my family so much joy and for that
I love her
Love that she tilts her head at times when you talk as if she’s trying to listen
And comprehend
Sometimes when I visit my father will say to her, “Get in your bed”
And she lays down on a soft spot in my luggage
That she finds a piece of red yarn and drops it at my feet
Inviting me to play
Something I thought only dogs did
That when you are alone and pondering she reaches her paw out
To let you know she is there
That she lays beside me quietly when I make collages
And when I finish she sits squarely in the middle
Once when I was leaving
She was upset and she raced up and down a hallway
From my room to the room where the front door is
And I saw her tiny bat ears peeking above the step
She is my mother’s warrior against all
The pawn that she threatens my father with
If I leave I’m taking my cat
She knows that’s the dagger
I suppose the battle in old age is loneliness
She and the cat miss me
My mother, an artist, has started doing large scale puzzles.
They always worked in the basement of the house
When I call my mother says, “Guess what?”
“Me and Mysti are now doing puzzles in your room”
I start to laugh
I thought about visual artists, how they use the phrase
Activating the space
I imagine Mysti and my mother activating the space
of my family bedroom
Keeping me there in spirit
Bringing me home.
SIDEWALK RAGE
I’m not sure why but it’s taken forever for me to write this poem
I hope to remember all the pieces
But I’ve developed a new condition
One that’s come from age/I can no longer take the shit I once did
And there’s a part of my condition that comes from gentrification
And cell phone use
Living amidst tech zombies
And their general fear and hatred of POC
My condition is called sidewalk rage
Kind of like road rage
But comes when walking down the street and there’s some millennial
Who has just moved into the neighborhood
who thinks it’s theirs
a white girl who in broad daylight feels a dark presence
walking behind her
It’s me/minding my own business and she gets so panicked and paralyzed
she stops walking and holds her purse
with my new condition I yell
If you don’t want to live around Black people get the fuck out of the neighborhood!
She is shocked.
Or in another scenario
You see random white women on their phones
Standing in a doorway completely blocking it
Because you know only they exist
And you’re like HELLO, HELLO
Yes, all these years I thought I was still a small town girl and then suddenly
with my sidewalk rage, I’m a bonafide New Yorker
like the ones you’ve seen on bicycles banging on the hood
of a taxi cab that tries to cut them off
My person with sidewalk rage is a character of their own
Where once I was silent
Recently I confronted a man who was blocking my path/crossing the street
He had his head down and almost rammed into me
I sucked my teeth loud and shouted HELLO, HELLO, MOVE
He was so angry I’d confronted him, he yelled, Suck my dick
I started to yell something profane but I stopped myself
And then I was in the subway/going downstairs and a white man rammed into me
On the phone
My sidewalk rage kicked in and thought for a second to sneak behind him
And kick him down the stairs
That’s my sidewalk rage/I stopped myself.
I don’t know who this person is in me who would never speak up for herself
Was always soft and vulnerable
Who’s been at various times pickpocketed, blasphemed,
body-slammed, ransacked, ridiculed
Who now has a voice
Who now lets rage show
Who couldn’t express herself
Has now become all angles and sharp edges.
YOU CAN’T GET OUT FROM UNDER
I may attach this to another poem and
I may not
This may stand on its own
But these are my jokes
If you happen to go outside and see some lady/some bitch
on the street/50-ish
coat open/it’s under 20 degrees
don’t yell, Are you fucking crazy?
Leave her alone, she’s in menopause.
Zero degrees/hot flash
And that shit feels good
Also, if you’re on a bus or a train and you
really need to sit down/find a Black man
A big Black man/next to him
the seat is always empty
Next to big Black women too.
Sometimes on a crowded bus to Boston
The seat next to me is completely empty
And just so you know I’m in a rage about crudité
FUCK crudité
Who eats crudité except for starving first-year college students
at a book party
Really what middle-aged person do you know is gonna chew hard
on a carrot stick at a party
It’s not a barn.
You’re not a sheep or some shit.
I mean, what about sensitivity to people with fake-ass teeth
I looked over recently at an event and saw some Brussel sprouts
on a platter of crudité at a party
Raw ass/hard ass Brussel sprouts
No one is going to eat raw Brussel sprouts at a party.
To my point, no one touched them.
And politics
