Crisis Actor

Ruby, please. A night shift nurse fell asleep at the wheel. The whole earth had a fever and the heated pulse beats faster ’til everything picturesque has her reeling. Just tryna make it real baby, like it is. He condescends. Twitching a trio of flax seeds between the thumb and forefinger in a dirty spiral, these are full of phytoestrogens that turn the gender    ...    generic    ...    generous. Hey, girl! Crease in her hey the size of turning. Is that mean? I live in place where it’s mean to be honest but I come from a place where it’s generous. Freetown is hedged on a slum. The ghetto, everybody’s vigilante. Cut to the footage of a young boy swimming in floodwater made of mud and feces. Constructed. Like shelter, the safest destination the excess has. You see a fugitive, I see my daughter’s future husband, Ma quips, full sunned and sweet, a nigga who can swim, can hunt her free. Glad silk bending his teeth into a Sunday hotel. And the kind of silt that reachers for shatter. All the land is water. You come forth through the cosmic slop by drowning. The sun is a gang of murders. You come through on the new acquittal looking for chicken strips and bourbon with Netflix on in the background and I’ll kill you myself. Back on the Las Vegas strip, the sun is a bouquet of drones chasing promoters through a circus. Stand there and look indignant in a bandana and stop calling the Loa out their names before they answer. You’re on the guest list for lil yachty and one oak and it’s a mouthpiece the boxer’s choking on when the nurse wakes up, a double suicide, American, pie and guns and obscene convenience, proud mascots for an army with no one left to defend
Source: Poetry (October 2017)