Menace to
~Taylor Johnson

after June Jordan

Nightly my enemies feast on my comrades
like maggots on money. Money being my enemy

as plastic is my enemy. My enemy everywhere
and in my home as wifi is

a money for me to reach my comrades
and kills my house plants. My enemy

is distance growing dark, distance growing
politely in my pocket as connection.

I must become something my enemies can’t eat, don’t have
a word for yet, my enemies being literate as a drone is

well-read and precise and quiet, as when I buy something
such as a new computer with which to sing against my enemies,
there is my enemy, silent and personal.

Copyright © 2020 by Taylor Johnson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 18, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

 Along the Border
~Jasminne Mendez
                                        after Idra Novey
On a dirt road
On a drive to el campo
You found a batey
I cut the cane 
We sucked on a stalk
You gave me your arms 
I swam in the river
We locked the door 
Then the lights went out 
And the radio played 
You fingered the pesos 
I walked to the beach
We fried the fish 
You ate the mango  
I jumped in the water
We bought the flowers
Then the migrants came
And you bartered for more 
Then the sirens blared
And they were carried away
But we didn’t stop them 
Then the ocean swept
And the palm trees sagged
They were foreigners
We were foreigners  
And we lived there

Copyright © 2020 by Jasminne Mendez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 15, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Not Poetry Thursday, for Mother's Day

 My Nothings
 ~Ama Codjoe

You, who have bowed your head, shed
another season of antlers at my feet, for years
 
you fall asleep to the lullabies of dolls,
cotton-stuffed and frayed, ears damp with sleep
 
and saliva, scalps knotted with yarn, milk-breath,
and yawns. Birth is a torn ticket stub, a sugar
 
cone wrapped in a paper sleeve, the blackest
ice. It has been called irretrievable, a foreign
 
coin, the moon’s slip, showing, a pair
of new shoes rubbing raw your heel.
 
I lose the back of my earring and bend
the metal in such a way as to keep it
 
fastened to me. In the universe where we are
strangers, you kick with fury, impatient
 
as grass. I have eaten all your names.
In this garden you are blue ink, baseball cap
 
wishbone, pulled teeth, wet sand, hourglass.
There are locks of your hair in the robin’s nest
 
and clogging the shower drain. You, who are
covered in feathers, who have witnessed birth
 
give birth to death and watched death suck
her purple nipple. You long for a mother
 
like death’s mother, want to nurse until drunk
you dream of minnows swimming
 
through your ears—their iridescence causing
you to blink, your arms twitching.
 
Even while you sleep I feed you.

Copyright © 2018 Ama Codjoe. Used with permission of the author.

 Duplex: Black Mamas Praying

Antoinette Brim-Bell

Black Mamas stay on their knees praying. Cursing

the lies folks tell ‘bout how the world don’t need you—

“The world don’t need you” is a lie folks tell themselves

when they step over blood gelled black and slick.

Folks step over black blood gelled and slick to get

on with things—don’t bring bones to the cemetery.

Bones in the cemetery, hear the prophecy:

—together, bone to bone—tendons and flesh—skin—

bone to bone—tendons and flesh—skin—together,

four winds breathe into these slain, that they may live—

—breathe, four winds, into these slain. That they may live—

Calling forth prophecy is no light work, No—

but, for Joshua, the sun stood still—the moon stopped.

Black Mamas stay on your knees praying—praying—

Copyright © 2020 by Antoinette Brim-Bell. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 11, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.