Amber Atiya's Shout Out on PoetryNow

Today on PoetryNow, Amber Atiya's "This Is a Shout Out (For the Tenants of the Red Little Building on Ocean Avenue)" makes its audio debut. The poem begins with a tribute to her mother, then launches off from there:

to mama who on the eve of my birth beat a bitch with a kool-aid spoon
for taking her eldest child’s red balloon (if i wasn’t wet-fisted, all
       hemmed
up inside cecelia, i’da jumped in)

to the bazaar of milk & afterbirth that once was her body, piping hot
almond dark with laughter & memories of fenced-in two-stepping
late night in a brownsville park

to mama’s hands, mad stallions pummeling dough for biscuits,
       cherry-scented
butter-smeared fists or floured moons

Take a listen below to the full episode.