(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 […]

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 […]

(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 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 […]

(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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

(from the tiny poems series) let’s have a flashback, to when our lives seemed carefree, when our world was simply a walk or a bike ride toward each weekend like unwritten stanzas in an endless poem, when there was nothing to write about except liquid summers and dried-up mornings, when my beard had no traces […]

(spoken word poem. part two of the pulse) Charleston, where church steeples and cranes look over us and multi-colored houses house live-in servants. where fast-rising hotels rise above slow-moving clouds that cast floods on the corner of America Street. where parades of one color get one day to celebrate then hide in the shadows of […]

A.C.’s   when the lights flash at 2a.m., every person in dimmed shadow becomes enlightened even though they are scrambling for another conversation with darkness and drama.     John L. Dart Library   the man at the pulpit says “I have faith that one day we will see her in the morning.” And I […]