—after Amaud Jamal Johnson, after Linda Gregg
How I wanted to charge
you there in that open eld
of day collapsing into night
the wail of your sts against
my mother’s body caused my mouth
to crack open—a spray of wings dark
as that starless sky where the swelling wasn’t too bad this time—
I didn’t want to be the animal
I became—
nostrils wet, teeth drawn, elongated
at the nail.
O, how the blood made me weep
how I couldn’t put it down
that this—your heavy hand over heavy hand —is how you expected us to live.
And so it was— a wildness in the blood
my body a savanna, stretches of esh
vast and wide.
I became the wild and the wild became myself charging on all four
haunches, daring another callous man
to resort to, if not the wilderness
of his hands, what then?
