Smudge Read online

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  you thirst for no in the key of a loyal throat & he will teach you the song you will hum for three decades after you will be hurt you will be hurt you will be hurt a ripple until your 30th birthday until all you know is thirst until every man is just a hi jack handshake waiting to happen beneath your skirt & the night will smell like all the things no one cares about like the night you almost stayed w/a cute smile w/beanstalks for arms how his hunger for your silence tossed you into a manhattan scaffold: curious for the c r u s h of bone

  your first boyfriend slips his tongue into your mouth

  his flesh a pink snake of regret

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  you learn to wait – here

  you are left w/everything that remains after a bombing

  you learn to live with what he does not take

  justification for the broken

  A) father gifts you his hands 2) your mother laughs w/the breath of a ghost C) no one remembers how much you cried 5) there are more houses in your throat than one can count E) you forgot how to count because you forget how to say i love you 8) your grandmother is a steeple 9) you love how love sounds more than you know how it works 10) you love how love works more than you know how to hold the pieces 11) your father showed you how love works with his absent mouth J) i love you K) your grandmother is a steeple – you are only a cemetery meandering 14) you can bury anything inside these hands 14.5) you are best w/dirt 15) you wear a printed t-shirt to the local farmer’s market – the blk letters read: do not get lost here, there is nothing

  but white soot

  the blkest night

  be a blk girl w/a trench

  for s k i n smell like a

  man she

  ain’t never

  goin’ have/no ring

  to call home/no/way

  1992

  The sun was always hot in the valley & you still ain’t know why Li Li ain’t answer your call until your older sister walk into the house her smile a blinding sun she ain’t never been nice not since she tried to drown you under in Mrs Gloria’s backyard pool back when you was only 6 years old & blk & bony & she was 11 & not so bony but she black & she say you ain’t got the same daddy & you ain’t care none until she say “don’t call my daddy your daddy” & you don’t call her daddy that name until she out the room then he say “call me whatever you want” & he nice & he here & she overhear you too & her eyes slit into a bl___k you ain’t never seen before but you don’t care cause you got a daddy cause you got TWO daddies & this kind of math make you smile cause you got somebody that want you so you giggle a little & she got a surprise she say & the pool is so blue & you just learn to swim & you want her to be proud & you got a daddy in jail but now you got a daddy for real TOO so you say what? & she say wait a minute so she can swim closer & she smiling like the sun like you & her is friends like you her little sister & you wait for her to get to your side of the pool & she reach her hand way up & you watch her fingers spread against the light & she bring her arm down so hard you can’t believe the sound it’s like a c r a c k like a bat like you only see blk & the blue is blk now too & her smile is like big until something move her hand away from your sunken face & she don’t stop smiling like now when she sashay thru the house 9 years later & you know what her kind of smile mean & you still a little bit scared even if you bigger than her & she her eyes a slit of blk again so you scoot away from her away from the door away from her outstretched hand & you scared to look too close to the hand so you ask what? & she say HERE! toss a keychain at you it’s a plastic one w/a picture on its insides & you look close no longer worried about her hands or her smile you too blinded by the photograph: her & Li Li horseback riding & smirking at the camera lens your blood hot & knowing

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  Grandma told you the story orange rinds upturned on their backs beneath her fingertips/she grin & say she ain’t care (much) about the sneaking around or the drugs or the (mishandling) money & you believe her cause she got the silky hair you always want & the brown skin that promise you goin’ be cute to someone other than ya mama/one day but today your jheri curl is bubbling up a song on the back of your neck –a crisp black because the California sun is not as forgiving as your grandmother be & she peel each orange almost smile at the thought of your Grandpa Dempsey & everyone call him Dee like his name so sweet you just gotta get it off they tongue & he just one pretty skinned wavy haired slick firecracker spitshine of a man she s m i l e he the type to wink at a woman and she return with a chicken plate & two biscuits w/out ever asking about the ring on his left hand he the only husband quick enough to give Grandma two children before her mouth change the locks on the front door she suck the titian flesh “any man forget his god long enough to call you a blk bitch be the first man to get gone”

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  when no one is looking you wear a white t-shirt as a wig you twist it into knots put a rubber band at the end it lay on your shoulder like a good girl like good hair like your grandfather Dee loved about his first & third mistresses when the night began to crawl slow you close your bedroom door & shut tight the curtains reach under the bed to find your prize of cotton s t r e t ch it at the neckline f o r c e your head into its gaping hole s t r a i n your neck a sky reaching for the roof you lift your head a halo crowned princess you roll your eyes to the sky like movies w/ Halle Berry&/Vanessa Williams like the porno pictures you found in your uncle’s bathroom your eyes reaching up up up & away/from the dirt

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  once you snuck a boy into your mama’s house he is the worst idea ever born this is before his box cut fade turned disaster warning smoke your trust can you you see it? his crooked yellow grin/a siren alarm/your hands crossed?

  notes & acknowledgements

  justification for the broken: was created after a prompt by Natalie Diaz during a Cave Canem workshop titled Image Explosive Device. I had the honor of a graduate assistant position. She prompted the class with different quotes as a catalyst.

  12 play genesis: was informed by the poem “When 12 Play was on Repeat.” The genesis form was created by Cave Canem alumna and summer retreat staff Amanda Johnston. The method to the greatness goes like this:

  •There are five individual poems, one in each column (read top-to-bottom)

  •The 6th poem is the entire body of the poem (read left-to-right)

  •The 7th poem is an erasure poem compiled of the bold words (read left-to-right)

  When 12 Play Was on Repeat: is previously published in The BreakBeat Poets (Haymarket 2015)

  sanctuary: is previously published in The Feminist Wire

  past before: is previously published in Winter Tangerine

  about the author

  A Cave Canem and Poets House alumnae, Mahogany L. Browne is the author of several books including Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out On-line, recommended by Small Press Distribution & About.com’s Best Poetry Books of 2010. She has released five LPs including the live album Sheroshima. As co-founder of the Off Broadway poetry production, Jam On It, and co-producer of NYC’s 1st Performance Poetry Festival, SoundBites Poetry Festival, Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcees. Browne has toured Germany, Amsterdam, England, Canada, and recently Australia as 1/3 of the cultural arts exchange project Global Poetics. Her journalism work has been published in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada’s The Word and UK’s MOBO. Her poetry has been published in literary journals Pluck, Manhattanville Review, Muzzle, Union Station Mag, Literary Bohemian, Bestiary, Joint, & The Feminist Wire. She is anticipating the release of several poetry collections in 2015, including Redbone (Willow Books) & the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American P
oetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket). She is an Urban Word NYC mentor, as seen on HBO’s Brave New Voices, and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country. Browne is also the publisher of Penmanship Books, the Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Program Director and Friday Night Slam curator, and currently an MFA Candidate for Writing & Activism at Pratt Institute.