big bang theory
in theory, she big bang.
her brown round lump of a body
stardusting half dozen babies into being
and giving God all the glory.
first Junior, who sprang to 6’4” like his daddy
ate up everything including the cardboard
pickled his tongue in sips of thunderbird
till shriveled liver polka-dotted his hands and lips pink.
Sista came next, wearing Ethel like storm cloud
and hex, shamed her into Angelina, meaning:
messenger of God but she big
and unpretty as a heathen.
Doris Yvonne got all the pretty and the skinny
and the crazy, so folks couldn’t covet.
at 6, she saw colors fuzzed round people
thought everybody had this rainbow vision.
then in 1952, my mama brown-nosed herself
here. granny named her Amber, a quiet, too-dark
punk of a girl, ass-whippings all the way home
from school. married her fool-self off at 14.
Wayne came out in handcuffs. did not
pass go. went straight to jail. met
Muhammad and became Ramel
became crackhead became ghost.
Pamela named me. cute as she wanna be
spoiled with religion, granny’s baby
spent half her life in the church testifying
to chicken wings, getting her holyghost on.
granny big bang. sequined hat
gangster. kicked Otis senior out
for mucking up her doilies with
engine grease. grandbabies everywhere.
fat as pork rinds and hungry as slaves.
she banged pots til they bled gravy,
banged her big body to the floor
in stroke. invented: serious as a heart attack.
she buried all the men with Jesus
on her breath. and when her big-boned
self big-banged to dust, we didn’t call
it death. we called it magic.
Copyright Credit: t’ai freedom ford, "big bang theory" from how to get over. Copyright © 2017 by t’ai freedom ford. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.