4 Telling
If I am black and beautiful, I really am and I know it and I don’t care who cares or says what.
—Nina Simone
No bitter peach or stranger fruit
grafted to a noble tree,
she takes her place in lineage
areola diversity, oracular
who looks to see, edges of a baby’s ear,
that child’s cuticles
in line though long shot to a throne.
How dark might she be?
How dark becomes her loveliness!
A newborn beauty in the world
old as being human.
Her own indivisible soul—
the brine’s—the duct’s—bumps in air’s chill.
Liquid wafts under
the corpuscle’s depth, hue
not one drop dilution or taint.
Showing all her colors, still too soon
to know how history hurts.
A black wail is a killer, puller into deep
half moon occludes an area
waves fan out sonic chuch
a smooth meadow rose is as black as the beach
plum, black huckleberry is black huckleberry, blue
berry is also black, a black broadest in the middle.
What else prompts imagining of her?
Bubble lineation here, here,
from oxygenature on down
above, glory as corkscrew: iron-like humor,
infinite symbols conversant toward heave,
athwart defiled gravitation
hotcomb hero hoofin it
hominy harbor unbothered
guayabera grill guise
rockin that radiator rah rah
shakin that shortcake shekere
mic check missy, a miracle
coloratura marrow, true voice on the blackhand side
how we can “tell” beyond inflection points,
a throat’s tinge
skeletal black, muscular black, breathing
from a black organ, black time passes behind
the black minute, other black dimensions
gohonzon gals harmonizing
scriptured baby hairs scissoring
some bodies to believe in, some body to bleed
peel off in black layers, limber and black at
flowering time, the fear of black, not black
but black, bone-black, sudden-black
Notes:
The authors write about the collaborative process behind this piece here.
Source: Poetry (November 2021)