Charleston SC poetry
Articles from this Category
strange roots (the digging)
I. deep down, i know that you can’t take away my shine. it’s been perfected over generations of mining. my ancestors spent years digging through dirt for any sign of a gem, any treasure that can peek through parasites. but the past is so dirty and deep-rooted that sometimes i am too tired to dig […]
selfie
have you ever taken a photo of a mountain? a screen never quite captures the magic. to reduce a massive, complex miracle to pixels is criminal. it’s too simple. we do the same to ourselves.
Stagnation (a letter 2 America)
America has built too many monuments to war. Man-made maladies mounted on Mother Earth. I’ve seen scars on the skin of our country’s landscape – blood-stained band aids covering exposed bones; a pain that has not healed. We hold hatred high on pedestals in the name of history. Birds are perched on the shoulders of […]
womanhood
(for tim and elise hussey, on the birth of their first child) in the blurry confusion of your first breath, you will open your eyes and instantly focus on love. arms will wrap you in wonder, your mother will bask in the miracle of womanhood, your father will paint colorful creations on blank canvases and […]
BLACK MAGIC, BLACK MUSE (a poem 4 Prince)
alone, on your last night alive with your voice unamplified, did you speak in perfect pitch like you sang, one week prior – 57 and flawless. fans, hanging on every word, melodies triggering memories, a Prince with a piano and microphone … alone, on your last night alive did you have the same confidence you […]
calloused hands
(inspired by Dave the Potter) what history will we carve with our hands? will it be an unfiltered truth as written word, tattooed on the body of pottery when reading and writing were revolutionary? will our hands hold each other in crisis again and again when our bodies are fragile and bone-dry, coiling the repetition […]
The arrogance of the moon
the moon is unmoving. frozen and self-centered in the atmosphere. he’s proud of the fact that he can be steady among a chaos of satellites while meditating above clouds and rubbing elbows with stars. he’s stoic. watching egoic people who are steady impressed with excesses, like high definition drones that give us a limited view […]
A woman’s hands are the hands of God
(written for the Women’s March in Charleston, South Carolina) I am a feminist because our bodies are tattooed with the fingerprints of mother nature. I am a feminist because a woman’s hands hold the spirit of comfort the way the sun carries the burden of warmth. I am a feminist because my mother was with […]
the last word
one day, someone will write the last poem about injustice and it will become our new national anthem. only history books will hold the memory of hatred and museums will be built for the artifacts of our awakening. one day, someone will have the last conversation about politics because we realized there were problems that […]
beautiful.
the word “black,” by definition, means “the absence of light.” but I am much more than a shadow. yes, sometimes blackness is the darkness that haunts unenlightened minds and sometimes people talk about me as if I am a cold, night sky without the spark of a bonfire. but, being black, by definition, is luminary […]
