© 2023 Brionne Janae

Published in 2023 by

Haymarket Books

P.O. Box 180165

Chicago, IL 60618

773-583-7884

www.haymarketbooks.org

info@haymarketbooks.org

ISBN: 978-1-64259-936-7

Distributed to the trade in the US through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.cbsd.com) and internationally through Ingram Publisher Services International (www.ingramcontent.com).

This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation, Wallace Action Fund, and the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please email info@haymarketbooks.org for more information.

Cover design by Brett Neiman. Cover photograph is “Delores, Melrose Plantation, Louisiana” by Carlotta Corpron. © 1988 Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL
-ANONYMOUS

•

WITH GRATITUDE TO ALL WHO LOVED
AND HELD ME ALONG THE WAY.

CONTENTS

Against Confessional

I.

“Want and Love are Not the Same Word”

Nothing More Isolating Than a Body

I Called It Grace

For Devonte Hart

Herbert Von King Dog Run

Journal Entry: “he made me feel like a drug addict”

Another Black Elder Finds Me Weeping on the Subway

Dear Gabriel Fernandez

I’m Tired of Living on an Island, but the Current’s Too Heavy to Swim Out

“Sometimes I Feel Like I’m Almost Gone”

“His Powerful Hand”

As Passed from Auntie to Auntie to You

Vocabulary Lesson

“Say It Wasn’t My Fault You Suffered”

II.

Enthusiastic Consent

I’m Tired of Living on an Island, but the Current’s Too Heavy to Swim Out

I’m Tired of Living on an Island, but the Current’s Too Heavy to Swim Out

Here

Love Poem to the Motherfucker Who Broke Into My Apartment

Poem Where My Dog Is the Hero

Love Poem

Sometimes You Can Stare and Stare at a Thing And Never See What It Is

My Mother Reads Her Bible

“What Cannot Be Communicated to the Mother Cannot Be Communicated to the Self”

Pendulum

Before

Amen

Resurrection

Pendulum

III.

Self-Portrait with My Parents’ Wedding Anniversary

Self-Portrait with a Line from an Old Hymn

When Spite Is the Only Thing That Feeds You

Dear Mother I’m Angry

Sometimes When I Grumble

Love Poem to Brionne at Sunset

Every Poem I Write I Ask Permission

Love Poem

Androgyny

My Mother Wants to Know I’ll Still Be a Bride

Tuning

I Like to Wear My Mother’s Clothes

In Search of a New God

Let’s Pretend My Mother Says “I’m Sorry”

Joshua Tree

My Mother Fights for Every Last Dime of Her Mother’s Refund

Love Poem

Geometry of Love

We’ve Come This Far by Faith

The Boundary

Against Mastery

Notes

Acknowledgments

AGAINST CONFESSIONAL

you are not my god

I owe you no debt

nor gratitude

will gift

no object

cut and bleed

no sacrifice

in your name

I offer only

my voice

that it catch

in your throat

drag you in the rooms

you dare not enter

yet fill and fill

I offer you

your stink

your rot

your festering wound

I bring no salve

no balm

nor rag to bite

and silence the scream

charging up

from your diaphragm

I offer you

your scream

your voice

your tremble and terror

I carry only a mirror

held at the right angle

that you may see

and see all

I.

“WANT AND LOVE ARE NOT THE SAME WORD”

after Nicole Homer

we used to sing I need you to survive

in church sunday mornings

the pastor would say turn to your neighbor

and we’d make eyes with strangers before god

and sing in the oversized congregation

where the youth came straight from the club

to the altar a sweater or shawl covering the skin

they’d let loose the night before

trying to catch a lover with the shine

of their shea butter-anointed flesh

need is not the same as want or love

but perhaps it is more honest

more insistent on our frailty our humanness

personally I can’t stand to be so exposed

if I acknowledge my soft human body

and all the ways it aches to be held

what happens when I still sit lonely

with no one to touch me and say you are real

somedays I’d rather die than admit my need

a flaw I’d best not take to my grave

though I guess we all must carry something at the end

NOTHING MORE ISOLATING THAN A BODY

acutely the lines come down around us

we each trapped in our own peculiar cells

unknowable one to the other

we spend all our lives learning to read

the pinch and crinkle of the skin

the limbs gesture heads every particular angle

we may as well be divining stars

even without gods we beg manna and milk

to be told where to go what to do

and how to bear the yoke of our bewilderment

please mother we say tell me what you mean

I CALLED IT GRACE

it’s not what I remember but rather the blank spaces

that billow up like wind thrashing the trees

the moments between the first frenzied steps in flight

and the chill of a wall at my back

the not knowing what comes after

but knowing my mother was after me

on good days I call this absence

this blank space in the memory grace

imagine my mind like a photo album

pulled from the ash of a fire

know the heat blackened image is mine

not from what I can piece together through soot

but because the collapsed frame around it is home

here’s one where I lie face down on my mother’s lap

in the apartment she and my father found

behind the Kmart by the freeway

the complex had a playground in the center

where a little blond boy called me nigger

I can still remember walking the path back home

to ask what the word meant

but not what happens next with my mother

was she about to strike or rub my back

she rarely touched me

and I was always so afraid

I don’t know when the sound

of my name on her lips

became like the slow pull

of a knife tip down my spine

or rather the breathlessness

of the wind sucked out of me

but it is now was then too

when I bent my preschool body at the waste

and watched the tint of my mother’s shadow

move between my feet

she swings

I run

I can remember my fear of the ladder

up to the bunk bed I never slept in

but not how in that panting moment

and through the darkness of the room

I got up there

I can see myself tucked

into a ball on the unused comforter

my back pressed against the wall

feet pulled into my body to keep

my mother from snatching me down

can still see the triangle of light at the door

feel the sweat of knowing

my mother was after me

but nothing else

nothing else at all

too long perhaps

I called this grace and love

the will of the mind to forget

what the body will always remember

FOR DEVONTE HART

I imagine your ghost as thin

and dark as your body clasped

around the armor of the officer who

in another two seconds might have peppered

your flesh with bullets charged

your form with the sharp sting of voltage

lifted his arms and squeezed

the life from your lungs

either way you are lifeless now

and I cannot stop seeing you

reaching from harm to harm

tears cutting a path down

around your nose and cheek

as if a stream

on the face of a mountain

and the snow was melting—sweet boy—

how high the pitch

and steep the frequency

of your suffering

in my dreams you never survive the frost

but in death walk slowly along the gravel

of a slender winding road

up the side of the sierra

though weightless the earth shifts

beneath your feet

in acknowledgment of your matter

of how you make the ground holy—

hosanna sweet boy hosanna—

you are ascending the mountain

the jet of your skin iridescent

beneath the sun’s heat your eyes

turned upwards to count the veins

in the tree leaves the birds in their nests

the beetles black and buzzing

through the branches

along the path flowers lift their faces

in greeting and you joke with them like sisters

full sated lush—

at the bend in the road you look down

the cliffside to the space

where the van would be

you don’t stop to look for brake marks

or signs of struggle

there are no surprises here

no uncertainty of what this was

only what was and in death is

no longer

you descend through the brush

and collect the bones

of your siblings

gather them like an artist

a benevolent god—all praises—

you lay out their skeletons

joining the joints with daisies

so enamored with your work

you don’t notice them

when they come

your brothers and sisters

soundless through mulch

their spirits all glimmer and shine

though a canopy overhead

you grasp each other’s hands

and without want or shadow

you meander slowly

toward eden

HERBERT VON KING DOG RUN

high summer and the grass is so green and overgrown

I almost can’t see the boy who haunts the run rolling

feral as any loose pup in the dirt

the boy is alone and when we speak

he curses the couples on the lawn

the Karens who scold him for being rough

rowdy and careless with their dogs

his hair falls to his shoulders like a basketball net

and sways with every accented fucking fuck

he is thirteen and gangly and white

and able to be a child wandering barefaced

into my bubble in the middle of a pandemic

I say where’s your mask? and he puts it on you happy now?

I smile at his sass and worry he doesn’t look cared for

outside the park three officers in plain clothes wait at a bus stop

rules say you must have a dog to enter

but no one will cast out this wild child

here he’s free

JOURNAL ENTRY:
“HE MADE ME FEEL LIKE A DRUG ADDICT”

—Dr. Susan Moore, who died of COVID-19 after complaining that her symptoms were not being taken seriously by white medical staff.

when he went in to have the cancer cut from his liver Pa was so afraid of the nurses and what they might do to his Black body Mo had to sleep on the small cot beside his bed all three nights while they waited to see how he’d do with the invasion.

I was in high school and he had spent all summer before the surgery saying how glad he’d be for a break from Molly. and when he couldn’t bear the idea of being alone with his gaping wound in that white space. I told myself after all this time he was still a boy from the backwoods of mississippi who’d never seen a reason to trust a white man in his life.

I can’t understand why white women are so willing to leave their children with strangers. I was babysitting once and a woman I’d only just met handed me her sobbing toddler and walked away. I wanted to cry too. When I was a kid my aunt complained about the nice white teacher who loved her daughter too much. I swear she’s gone run off with my baby she’d say.

no one ever wants to talk about how close we are to the legacy of enslavement but it’s right there. you just choose not to look.

even in a viral pandemic that destroys the lungs the error rate for oximeters is three times higher for dark-skinned patients. a product of whites only studies. a flaw discovered fifteen years ago that no one cares to fix.

I’ve decided I can’t trust anyone who uses darkness as a metaphor for what they fear.

on my way into the hospital when I was singing about my rape and begging and begging to go home the man in charge of the ward looked at me like a thing to be got under control. and I knew then I had been outside my mind to go there in my need and think anyone might help me.

ANOTHER BLACK ELDER FINDS ME WEEPING ON THE SUBWAY

grabs my wrist before exiting the car

who knows what it is about the screeching

moans of the track and all the bodies

pressing in that opens me but it does

and I weep openly into this woman

she is only inches from my face whispering

so I can feel her breathe me in and out

her voice a tether demanding I remain

whatever it is god’s got it she says

shaking me like a tambourine before an altar

as if to summon me back into my body

as if she knows how far I’ve gone

DEAR GABRIEL FERNANDEZ

The fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge —Proverbs 1:7

often I picture your beginning the mother’s blood

washed from your skin with care the whole of your body

wrinkled and papersoft placed into the arms of the woman

who brought you here and took you out

what she must’ve seen in your eyes then

the same ones she smeared

with foundation to mask the fear

of the lord she beat into your skin the blue

of the wound gifted to cleanse away evil

how to bear them now staring out into the camera—

your veiled ache climbing through

your spirit bound again to the violences

born by flesh—is this what she wanted

a sweet dead boy over a blossoming sissy

dear godless angel fairy child and waif

I come here with nothing to offer

but your name on my lips a prayer to the edge

of wordlessness a curse for the wickedness of god

I’M TIRED OF LIVING ON AN ISLAND, BUT THE CURRENT’S TOO HEAVY TO SWIM OUT

the last person who held me raped me

—story of my life—when I dream of her

we’re still together and it’s all I think about

the dreams are unpleasant but hardly nightmares

once we were looking at a new apartment

some place in the country I’ve never been

and there was nothing but green outside and sun coming in

and the living room was so wide and open

and the woman who lived downstairs was offering it to us

at just the right price

and my ex was smiling her we could be happy here smile

and I was fine but didn’t know what to do

about the stone tumbling down into the basement

or in another we’re living

in my father’s childhood home for some reason

and it’s time for bed

and we’re going to sleep where my father’s parents slept

where I had slept some nights between them as a girl

unsure of where to put my body

and I’m not a girl in the dream but still so unsure

and the headboard looks exactly as it did

when I was young

“SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE I’M ALMOST GONE”

in the sixth month after your body refused

to keep his secrets you remember him

home alone with his heart disease his old age

and wonder how long he will sit

slack and sunken before he is found

you picture his body the ashen cold of his skin

the smell of shit and decay a mouse

scampering up the arm of the chair to bite

at his eyebrows you want this

to feel good you say if there is a god

then this is how it will happen

you say god owes me

if you believed in peace

you’d know this is not the way

but since you have given up believing—

“HIS POWERFUL HAND”

no never being an option

your grandmother teaches you

to turn your cheek to keep

the old church mothers

from kissing you dead

on the lips to wait

to wipe the spittle

and lipstick from your skin

to breathe so shallow

that when the deacon whispers

in your face you don’t smell

the sour coffee he tried to hide

with the mint dissolving under his tongue

to sing

I’m coming upon the rough side

of the mountainI must hold to god

AS PASSED FROM AUNTIE TO AUNTIE TO YOU

when she names your grandfather

they crowd her little girl body

and convince her of what it mustn’t know

they say she doesn’t understand

and what grown man and turn

their noses in displeasure

at the child’s unbridled tongue

your grandfather is young then

still part of the familial body

testing the heft and shadow

of his deacon’s suit

and she is just a small thing

with crisp ribbon binding the braids in her hair

white stockings her mother bleaches clean

for sunday school and the shine of snot

that coats the lips of young children

VOCABULARY LESSON

1. Pachyderm

is a mammal with a tough outer skin that is bumpy

a rhino a hippo an elephant

each an object with the same container

but different meanings

you always loved a word

can imagine he must’ve seen how it delighted you

as you rubbed the leather of his chair

and tried to imagine how a hippo might feel

now you’re sure he was checking something

like if you could tell yet

the similarities and differences

in a container

like if you knew when to speak

and when to keep your mouth shut

2. Nigger

he gives you a word

the word is nigger

the word means

don’t repeat this to your mother

you are young

so young you scarcely a girl

you say the word

perhaps you croon it

as he taught you

when no one was looking

only your mother hears

hears it roll past your lips

hears the bad

she says

it’s bad

says don’t say that

and you learn

to hold

the bad word

squeeze it like a warhead

burning sour

on your tongue

3. Grandpa

there are three bobbys in my family

bobby my father

bobby my brother

and him

I avoid naming as if the claim

would call him in the room again

treat denial like a matter of safety

you try not to but think of the bobbys like pachyderms

better know for sure which is which

who has the horn and who doesn’t

I don’t call my brother by his first name

only brother brother

keep your kids safe

I stopped saying daddy

and gave up thinking anyone

could keep us safe

“SAY IT WASN’T MY FAULT YOU SUFFERED”

after Toi Derricotte

head anchored between your hip bones

nudging the cervix from the inside

days the long and weary task of opening

and me all too big from the start

mother in another era I would’ve killed

us both must I alone be blamed

I know the crease of the scar creeping up

your belly how after my brothers were pulled

limb by limb from that same crater

you cradled the wound so gingerly

I worried you might split apart

mother you don’t have to forgive me

I know what it’s like to refuse

and still be opened

II.

ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT

no matter how you’ve been lonely

in bed together you think you need her here

breathing and restless beside you

she who won’t listen or repeat the phrase

enthusiastic consent

without smirking how do you measure that?

you measure loneliness by the places you linger

the people you let close to you

tonight she won’t be stayed

won’t be settled or held close

like the others she rises above you

kneels like them too opens your legs or tries to

and you haven’t spoken for hours

hadn’t planned to till morning

you squeeze your legs

and push her arms away

you grow frantic

and she likes it

your enthusiasm

you try not to recognize the dance

take and take

you think she can’t be stronger than me

you push back harder

but she won’t give up

she pulls your legs

you push her hands away

your body animal and mute with sleeplessness

her hands and your hands and the squeeze of

your thighs fighting for possession

oh sweet silent object

oh unwilling and desperate body

you are losing you are losing you aren’t fighting anymore

I’M TIRED OF LIVING ON AN ISLAND, BUT THE CURRENT’S TOO HEAVY TO SWIM OUT

daphne was determined

to die for the longest

she would just rain

dry yellow needles

all over the desk

till I nearly expected

a sprout to spring

from the mulch

so I moved her

to the ledge

where the sun’s brightest

near plant baby

who I love most

because she was first

and never minded

a little neglect

though she can be dramatic as hell

with her branches

and leaves drooping

like some sad

little willow

when she’s been too long without

sable I found

in the garbage

and she’s been content

with whatever spot

she’s gotten inside

ever since

each morning

when jerome opens

to greet the sun

I imagine

he whispers

hallelujah

and every night

when he closes

amen

willie earl

I named for my uncle

who died

the wise old

elephant ears

open

so lusciously

green

I’M TIRED OF LIVING ON AN ISLAND, BUT THE CURRENT’S TOO HEAVY TO SWIM OUT

my therapist wants to know how I wound up here

she asks me to describe the island

so I tell her about the well

I spend my time in

it’s deep and shaded but not too cold

I like the way my voice talks back to me

bouncing along the corrugated stone

when I’m bored I like to sing and drum

and let the orchestra swell between my ears

my therapist asks if I can get out of the well

if I want out of the well

she doesn’t quite get

that it doesn’t matter

it’s just where I live

one day the wind will chase the water

over the ground and I won’t live here anymore

or maybe something else less bleak

either way

HERE

after & for John Allen Taylor

after nine hours on a turnpike lousy with deer—

some almost sleeping others just a flush

opening and so much blood

these nearly always in drowsy sundown towns

perhaps as a reminder of whose country this is anyway perhaps to say

nigger you better hurry along before the

sun declines to bear witness—

after we’re done with family done with holiday cheer

we meet in a bar a few miles from detroit

though it may as well have been new england

for all its white picket fences kitschy bales

of hay and oak leaves crimson

as the coasts of the pacific at the close of day

we order beers we muddle through familiarity and distance

how fast are you dying we ask how well are you performing wellness

we forget to be careful how fresh are the scars we forget

to lower our voices are they healing we are like salmon

flopping around the fisherman’s boat reckless desperate

sometimes slowly you say sometimes not at all I say too often too fast

we glance at the flat screens mounted in the corners like bucks’ heads

another #MeToo muted another reminder of all we are lo sing

of what we never had to begin with

the light of it playing across our faces the world

a steady bleakening a clotted scream

the other day my therapist asked if she ought to be concerned for me

and I heard do I need to take you from yourself

you tell me how you were taken once how you only just

convinced them to give you back I tell you what keeps me here

we both pretend it is enough

I could tell you how afraid I am but with our

knees knocking below the counter

like siblings like we are simply trying to

be sure of ourselves to be sure

we are both here both solid tender flesh

I could tell you how afraid I am but we

are too much like trees I think

each of us sending the other sugar through the roots

though we are both sick I say I’d miss your poems

you say to call when I feel like leaving we hug we part

each of us down our own lonely road

my dearest brother I promise I’ll stay here

promise you will too

LOVE POEM TO THE MOTHERFUCKER WHO BROKE INTO MY APARTMENT

all I’m saying is that was some good ass weed you stole

top shelf and you better have enjoyed it

I mean you looked like you needed some flower

the way you clutched the tin against your chest and leapt

down the stairs ok I didn’t really see you leap

I was running for my life too after all

me out the front door you through the basement

the man who chased you down the street for no other reason

than the frantic in me could’ve been my brother

but you could’ve been my brother too

frozen a split second exiting my bedroom door

as if you were the doe

and not the semi barreling towards me

I didn’t want to call the cops on you

but you had my laptop too and had been inside my bedroom

and I have been the doe my whole life and it frightened me

they say you ditched my laptop when you started hopping fences

the sirens howling in broad daylight pumping cortisol

and adrenaline into your thighs and heart run

run run run forgive me

I wanted you far from me yes

but also I want you alive and free

POEM WHERE MY DOG IS THE HERO

sleeping my dog Lili likes to nestle

between my legs

high up by the thighs

my one leg arching over

like a bridge she runs to for shelter

butt to butt

nose to calf

we slumber

and she keeps my pussy from danger

sometimes I tell jokes about her clinginess

pretending to be annoyed

with how she claims the center of my bed

in my dreams though she’s always there

lips curled up exposing her teeth

setting a boundary like she does when another dog

won’t heed her subtler cues or acting how she gets

when the wrong men get too close

too interested after dark

when my ex kneels to force

her hand inside me

Lili releases a low grumbling growl

try it and I’ll take your fingers

and I drift quietly back into sleep

peaceful and not raped

LOVE POEM

all night you get up to check on the baby

your little niece swaddled

like a perfect burrito

breathing so softly

you worry her lungs will stop if you sleep

in the morning red eyed and cloudy

you hand the baby to your mother

and she laughs at your worry

says she’s restless when she keeps O too

though she never felt that way with you all

maybe because you were mine

you imagine her then

baby-faced in the hospital

delirious from drugs and labor

a newborn on her chest

screaming and screaming unable to latch

and your mother the youngest of seven

who never cared for anything in her life

somehow supposed to make it better

SOMETIMES YOU CAN STARE AND STARE AT A THING AND NEVER SEE WHAT IT IS

I hate rats

they remind me of something

I can’t or won’t place

the city is full of rats

I don’t walk after sundown to avoid them

I stomp my feet down dark alleys

so they have time to scamper away

mostly I put them

so far outside my mind

I forget

they exist

until I see one darting

from a trash pile

my friend has to say rat trap!

before I see

the black boxes littered

all over brooklyn

sometimes it’s trickier

like with the rat I couldn’t avoid

on the walk from the train in boston

so I named him Ralph

and said hello Ralph

every night on my walk home

one day Ralph got smashed by a tire

something tasty in the road and he forgot to run

I couldn’t bring myself

to look closely at the remains

but remember

how shocked I was to see

the other rat puttering

around his body

how I had only made peace

with the solitary rodent

and not the dense inevitable infestation

MY MOTHER READS HER BIBLE

after the minister has read the scripture

and began to preach a good word

my mother circles back to the head

and carries on past

the pastor’s delicately plucked verse

packed in the Los Angeles warehouse we called sanctuary

where we praised god so loud you could find your way to the altar

through the haze of the baldfaced factory buildings

blending one into the other

on the other side of the unused rail tracks

sure as the elders could find their way to the prayer meetings

hidden way back in the woods of mississippi

from the sounds of the yes lords

rising to kiss the tree leaves alone

my mother a martin luther

among the caught up masses

trusted no one

least of all a man

who would have himself

anointed above her

and I had trusted

my mother

had seen how she could fight

the teachers who didn’t think

we were smart enough

white enough

had seen her read a man for filth

had heard her say she was too crazy

for anyone to touch her daughter

had seen her smile

at the man who hurt me

and believe him

when he said it wasn’t my fault

and though he hadn’t been talking about me

I had never seen my mother

be wrong

and so when she believed him

I did too

even above myself

“WHAT CANNOT BE COMMUNICATED TO THE MOTHER CANNOT BE COMMUNICATED TO THE SELF”

—John Bowlby, expert in Attachment Theory, Cognitive Behavioral Theory

she shows her mother the stain

filling the gusset of her panties

like an inkblot test

and the mother names it fine

so the girl learns to be fine

and doesn’t think of it

not even years after

when her breasts swell

like mosquito bites and she learns

like other girls to rinse out blood

in cold water rubbing the fabric

between her knuckles

until her fingers grow stiff as ice

~

children don’t get weary
children don’t get weary
children don’t get weary
till your work is done

~

but I’m tired

momma I’m so

tired I’m so mom

ma i’m so but i’m so

so tired i’m so tired

momma i’m so

i’m so i

’m so

so

so

so

Pendulum

after Keith Wilson

Key

A) the sense of someone else in the room and then the weight: dense and immobile: a wall of brick on her chest

B) on an elevated surface: the surface is contextual if you saw a scalpel you’d call it an operating table: (you must not call it a bed)

C) chewing pork someone has coated and fried with oil: taste of sandpaper and ash: the girl’s jaw moving slower and slower: the flesh a solid lump greeting the bile at her throat

BEFORE

it was summer and so hot

you couldn’t tell the sweat

from the pool water

gathering in fat droplets

on our sunbrowned skin

one of them days

me and my cousins

was so free

so cute

you couldn’t tell us shit

granny had let us walk to rite aid

to buy candy with the few dollars

she could spare for our sugar high

she would drive past

on our route

just to be sure

we was still alive

when we got back home

we flew upstairs real quick

so we wouldn’t have to share with our brothers

so granny wouldn’t see

the bubblegum

my momma said would rot my teeth

my back had been hurting all the way home

but it hadn’t mattered

cause I was wearing this three quarter swimsuit top

with a little midriff showing

and these real cute white shorts

K saw the blood first

and screamed like she thought

I was dying

she was two years younger than me

and I was young to be bleeding

so she probably thought I really was dying

we had been changing

in a rush to get back to the pool

and I had thrown those white shorts

upside down on the bed

and there it was pooling

like a stripe on somebody’s flag

and what about the time before?
the first time
there was blood?

what about it?

what happened before?

I had come home

from somewhere.

where?

I don’t know.

AMEN

you do not understand

memory

the origin of fear

the passing,

whisper

slick with sweat

all those years. learning

the tip- toed walk

you know

he must have but you cannot

hear

it too present

the faint scent of terror,

will

his will.

you feel his body

choke on his

hard love

you say

my sins nothing.

~

but blood

still

you fear

salvation,

tremble

beneath the feet of saints.

allowed forget—

the bruised

fracture

to hide

memory

in the lines

of their hands

RESURRECTION

nasal swab stretching your nose the no

where to run of it the entering and there you are again

trembling barrettes on your pigtails no no no

rammed back down your throat the shut eyes the familial

inevitable the refusal to witness

you can hear the doctor trying to count you through

the invasion but she is so far and too late now anyway

PENDULUM

A) base maybe but never the head normal thickness hair curling like tar covered springs like tires from all the wrecks a sea of swirling spirals of snakes deadly and clambering for the neck—my neck—the skin beneath peaking through—his skin—a desert sand you’re sure it’d burn to touch

B) he’s all over me

and he’s keeping me alive

he’s all over me

and he’s keeping me alive.

III.

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH MY PARENTS’ WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

only a few times did your mother have love enough

to ignore the rot and venom of her disgust

for your father the man she kept like a noose

at her neck so you and your brothers

wouldn’t be another number

in the graphics fox news makes denouncing Black

fatherless children going nowhere but prison fast

then she’d nod a halfhearted assent and they’d pack

for vegas and your father would call up his dad

who despite his sister’s sweat soaked fear he would not give up

then it was north up the 605

north toward the San Gabriel Mountains

knotty with brush and ruinous with fire

hell’s inferno come up to fill the sky with ash

this normal as your grandfather ready and waiting

in his normal house with the normal neighbors

who don’t know to listen or look

for the noiseless way a girl is ground down

to nothing and no one her spirit a sightless nomad

wandering the dusty knolls at the base of the mountain

her body a no man’s land waiting for her

mother and father to return

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH A LINE FROM AN OLD HYMN

“… and there may I though vile as he… ” from “There is a Fountain”

and how thick a stain

how deep

through how many layers

how sunken in the flesh

through skin and fat and muscle

viscera bone

to the marrow even

I’m too scared to look

can you see it

smell it

evidence it

getitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffme

on facebook a man wants to know

fellas if your wife gets raped by ___ men

you sticking with her

or is that something you can’t get passed

can’t bear to taste

can taste

can you taste it

going rancid

sharp and acrid

how acidic

I think I feel it sometimes

can you see it burning

is it burning

am I burning

and tell me where shall I

how shall I

wash oh wash wash wash wash wash

and what blood

with whose blood

whose blood

whose blood

getitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffme

and whose sins

who wash oh wash oh wash wash wash

wash wash wash wash wash wash

away

WHEN SPITE IS THE ONLY THING THAT FEEDS YOU

bite down and break the skin against your teeth

chew

take full possession of your mouth

let it hang open

or purse the lips tight as a zipper

so not a morsel

slips loose

stay present

and if the past comes knocking

your grandfather’s hands

popping up all over your body

bite down again

harder

use all of your teeth

the canines the incisors

grind the flesh down

between your molars

until it’s a mushy lump at your throat

swallow

swallow again

keep what you can down

and what you can’t spit into the air

be a child again

wipe the grease from your lips like blood

and rub the residue into your jeans

laugh

let it be hysterical

DEAR MOTHER I’M ANGRY

dear mother I hold my anger like a grappling hook

dear mother my anger wears me like a glove

dear mother wait for me

dear mother I worry my anger will outlast me

dear mother I am gripping my anger by

the throat like a strangled hen

dear mother I have strangled my anger

dear mother do you want to know what it takes to strangle

dear mother I have buried my anger on the side

of the road like an accident victim

dear mother nothing rises with the dead like anger

dear mother sometimes the anger flows

through me like the breath of life

dear mother no matter what I do all I breathe is fire

dear mother it burns

dear mother I have found the fire extinguisher

and hit my anger over the head with it

dear mother I fear sometimes the anger is madness

dear mother my anger is still here nestled beside me like a stray dog

SOMETIMES WHEN I GRUMBLE

I sound like my grandfather

who raped me

and it’s always surprising

his groans rumbling up

like magma to scorch the earth

when I’m vulnerable

or in pain

you’d forgive me for wanting

to cut off the source

put a stopper in it

a plug a gag a pacifier

I swear it’s a full-time job

soothing my inner child

neediest whimpering thing

and I don’t know what to tell her

when he comes wheezing from our throat

it’s not my fault

though still I find myself on my knees

before the bleary-eyed child

begging please forgive me

forgive me forgive me

LOVE POEM TO BRIONNE AT SUNSET

what would you have me do with your rage

how many fires shall I start

how many times shall we tear ourselves open

what are you dragging me back to

I don’t want to go love

I don’t want to go

don’t make me

I know

I’m a terrible witness

I’m sorry

but let’s not

not tonight

I’ll give you your bonfire

if you let me turn memory to ash

let’s live like fireflies

I promise you

they exist

we exist

you exist

let’s live only from one flash of light to the next

let’s own the night

let’s stone fear

let’s not look any further

let’s not look back

just close your eyes love

release your fists

you are here now

and it is safe

you are safe here

I promise you

you’re ok

EVERY POEM I WRITE I ASK PERMISSION

to exist I keep the history of my body

locked away in a file labeled do not name

more often than not I’m grieving

which is why doves peek in

at my window

every morning

I thank god

for how my family

could always laugh after funerals

I am estranged

from god and have this terrible belief

if I found the right words

she would understand

and say oh my dear my dear

it’s true I’m talking about my mother again

and true as well I’ve made the decisions for you

but I can’t bear it!

this tremble and waiting

to see when or if or how you might love me

LOVE POEM

it takes too long to realize you don’t know how to fight

years you treasured the memories of play fighting

with your brother the animal joy at being bigger

stronger by almost three years replaced with the dance

of learning to box with someone who’s got

four inches on your wingspan

then you’d tuck your torso into a ball and ram your body into his

feather punching his gut until the drama of his retreat

or the bear grip of his arms hauling you into air

like your father when you were a girl

and still thought daddy was the strongest man you knew

now you watch your brother place his daughter gingerly

into the bassinet for a little independent woman time

and think of how she too will learn to spar with her father

and if she’s lucky never realize it’s only dance

ANDROGYNY

you can remember

how it stretched

the width

of your shoulders

broad like your brothers

how you never wanted

to be him boy child

namesake of the father

who called you babygirl

made sure you could dribble

with your right

and left hands

read a madden playbook

pull worms from a bait box

without squealing

you think you can remember

the day your parents

brought your brother home

how when your mother

pushed her tapered nipple

into his infant mouth

you pressed your baby

hard and plastic

against your flat

chest and fostered life too

at times you thought

it was only about power

how you didn’t want

to give up the feeling

of wrestling

your forearm circled

about your brother’s neck

his head locked

his hips pinned

by your legs

the smug feeling of mercy

on his lips before letting go

you can admit

you envied him

how one day

he would grow tall

mighty as your father

while your body

would only soften and bleed

how when he caught

the pigskin your father

let fly through air

he was only good

as he should be

how when he sent

the ball back

spiral tight as a drill

through bone

he was only throwing

like himself

MY MOTHER WANTS TO KNOW I’LL STILL BE A BRIDE

on my wedding day

none of this wanting

to be a man like those other queers

my mother has always dreamt of me

in a bustle of tulle and lace

a train trailing all the way down the aisle

only I can make her mother of the bride

no matter how many dress fittings

hair cake and catering appointments

she attends with my cousins

I couldn’t tell you what a man is

but I’ve tried and don’t fit

neatly into the other box

there’s always my knee

or shoulder poking out

lately I’m tired of being hemmed in

and can’t help but imagine

there must be other options

like how my mother would pull out her camera

and put my brothers into my old flowered dress

just to see what they’d look like if they were girls

how she always told them how pretty they looked

how I knew that I was them

a boy twirling in his dress

TUNING

to annoy me sitting in traffic

on random take your niece to work days

my uncle liked to sing off-key

while I’d beg him to shut up

or find his way to a chord

he always knew

how to press on people’s buttons

knew I had a good ear

but not as good an ear

as I believed

sing in your own key

and I’ll stop he’d say

harmony had always been easy for me

and I was too young then

to see the purpose of discord

the radio pushed out the tune

and I followed the progressions

whether I wanted to or not

watching me struggle to break loose from the chord

my uncle said you have to hear

the people sing and yourself

you have to hear yourself louder

I LIKE TO WEAR MY MOTHER’s CLOTHES

I underpack when I go home

leave a little room

for the sweatpants

ballooning kneelength shorts

the black and white striped maxi dress

I’ll ferry back and wear like a time traveler

lost in an aggressively gentrified brooklyn

my mother shops when she’s sad

not that she’d say she was sad

just struggling with where to put everything

we’ve both got a thing about clutter

something we’re trying to fill or stock up against

once I walked into a room

and she said I had a pair of green shorts just like those

and I said I know these them

my mother wants a mini me and says so

all her sisters have one

even the cousins too

when I was twelve I climbed five inches over my mother

but didn’t outgrow her dainty size seven feet

she’d leave her sandals by the door

and I would slide into them running outside

to help bring in groceries or just play horse with my brother

when I was younger my mother loved to

dress she and I in matching outfits

green shirts and blue jeans for st patrick’s day

matching track suits in red and purple for valentine’s day

brand new christmas pajamas every year

I knew my mother loved me the year she agreed

to the powder blue pajamas she hated

with “Let It Snow” in bold letters on the shirt front

IN SEARCH OF A NEW GOD

Scripture: Honor thy father and mother and your days will be long on this earth

Revision: Get free and when you do take all who are willing to walk

Praxis:

try not to leave your mother

even when her eyes move like scalpels looking for the parts of you

she’d shave away cut off like a wart she’s grown tired of looking at

instead watch the way she bites her tongue

and try not to fill in what she might say

if she wasn’t trying to respect your boundaries

remember you are teaching new vocabulary

new ways of moving of shaking off that old rugged cross

remember you both spring from the same root

and how love has tangled your freedom all up in with hers

and remember Harriet hunched over in the

painting at your auntie’s house

her rifle pointing towards the sky her hand reaching firmly back

to protect the ones she ferried say get behind me mother

and don’t forget the rifle points both ways

and no matter how the dogs press and the nights screech with horror

turning back was never an option

LET’S PRETEND MY MOTHER SAYS “I’M SORRY”

you were so helpless and new and I had held

my sisters’ babies when they were born

but never been left alone to nurture

something so small and barely formed

and I had struggled just to get you here

had gone toe to toe with death alone

negotiated for our survival and let blood

so you could live it didn’t matter if I wanted to give

when your father bent to suck and see if he couldn’t pull

something out there was no milk and I had labored

damn near three days just to get to you

and here you were screaming like it was my fault

and that’s how it went no matter what I did

you made me feel small and not enough

and I knew no way around fault

so I gifted it all to you

JOSHUA TREE

after I saw my dragon napping in the gossamer clouds

I danced swaying like a palm through warm september gales

R witness to the music my feet made dragging

across linoleum outside the desert grows loud

with nightcrawlers and the mountain covers her face

as I howl my pleasure at the nibbled moon

I watch my body move in the windows black void

and fall in love with the wild and coil the shimmy and tender

our mothers didn’t get to do this R says

shrooms I say this she says

exhaling a fog of smoke with a pleased grin

lips pursed I decide that like my mother I look beautiful when I pout

I have time thank god and am learning

to love myself from the outside in

she’d hate this but I wish I could bring her here

quietly I invite my mother in and sit her down at the table

I tell her what I can’t say

and it doesn’t matter whether she hears me

MY MOTHER FIGHTS FOR EVERY LAST DIME OF HER MOTHER’S REFUND

this has nothing to do with the value of a dollar

or anything anybody might need

the sales associate is simply mistaken

she thinks she can outlast my mother

but doesn’t know how long the ledgers been stacked against us

my mother’s mother the daughter of sharecroppers

her ugly middle name a bartering chip

a soiled hammy down from the white lady

whose land they sucked a living from

as if after all her mother’s lonely labor even this

even the child who came wrinkled and slick

with her own blood wasn’t hers in the end

Jardine Mo’s lips curl like the taste

of rotting flesh on the tongue just to say it

don’t you give that name to any of your children she says

flaring her nose a wide line drawn between

miss’ssippi and california

as if that was all it took to keep the haints behind us

on the call the associate is trying to convince my mother

she doesn’t know how to read

the charges spread out like a field of black ink

as if my mother had been the one

crammed into a one-room schoolhouse

her books picked apart by the white kids

who owned them before

nigger scribbled on every page

my mother has never bowed her head for anyone

and I know today ain’t the day she starts

I can hear the ice in her voice

each word freezing to a dagger’s point

hear the I wish a mother fucker would

in each crisp enunciated syllable

she’s been twice as good for half as much

and has felt everything the world can take

she has seen her mother feel this too

outside Mo pats the earth

around the birds of paradise in their flower beds

she said she wouldn’t spend her life

in someone else’s dirt and didn’t

above her the birds crane their necks toward the sun

the orange and blue plumes shiny with dew

their beaks green and silent swaying in the breeze

at times it seems they’ll fly

LOVE POEM

after I cut mine my mother asks

what I will do when she is too old

to raise her arms above her head

to dust the crop that grows like wild grasses

leaping from her skull this isn’t the first

time she’s asked how I will care for her

when it’s time though it is always

about her hair how I’ll probably cut it off

or lock it up how after all this time

and all her skill I never acquired any

of my own then I like to say

I will take her to the hair salon

as if I don’t know she is asking

how much and how well I love her

sometimes I say she’d better start teaching

the grandkids how to warm a hot plate

and part the hair evenly at the root

most days though I can already see my gloved hands

slippery with dye and all that stubborn gray at the base

I’ll pull the widetooth comb slowly

through the length of her hair

it will almost be enough

GEOMETRY OF LOVE

after Taylor Johnson

if my mother loves me then love hurts

if love hurts then it will not save

if you wanna be saved grandma say you got to call the name of jesus

if you calling on jesus you better have all three his numbers landline personal and work cellphone

if you call all three a jesus’ numbers and he still don’t answer then just know the brother was busy

if the brother is busy then you better have someone else to call

if you’ve got no one else to call then you know what it’s like to be alone

in the wilderness beneath a canopy of gawkingstars

if the stars are gawking then you must’ve crossed over

if you’ve crossed over then you know what it is to be chased from home

if you’ve been chased from home was that ever really home to begin with?

if you’ve never been somewhere that felt like home start with what feels good against your skin

if love feels good against your skin then call it home and don’t worry the shape it takes

if the shape of love is liquid and mercurial then call yourself a shapeshifter lean with it rock with it

if you a shapeshifter then baby you can be anything you like

if you can be anything you like twist and turn go forward and double back until you find what it is that gives you joy

if you can find what gives you joy then the world is all yours

if the world is yours be generous tear open the bread and share it

WE’VE COME THIS FAR BY FAITH

bullheaded beautiful and black

you be a galaxy

infinite and dusted with stars

lean into the absence

the dark obstinate abyss

be a wormhole

pull everything in

even when your grandmothers

didn’t know what to pray for

they still prayed for you

if you believe in nothing

believe in you

sing to the child in the well

sing until she unfurls her fist

until she sings too

get her out

take her with you

straighten your back beloved

nobody was ever promised they’d live

THE BOUNDARY

made of stone maybe the opal shades of rock

blending like the surface of a pond in watercolor

I’d grow vegetables on my side

my mother would plant roses on hers

when the sun was out the sky blue and warm

we’d stand with our hoses spraying the ground

trading tips on how to get rid of snails

or keep the weeds from returning in summer

on rainy days my mother would sit in her house

shaking her head at the bleak gray clouds

and I would pull on my raincoat to take out my dog

sometimes a stone would fall when the weather got bad

and after we’d stand crossarmed at the border

muttering about what the other ought to do to fix it

sometimes whole sections would fail

the stones crushing a rose bush or vine of sweet peas

my mother peeking through to turn her nose up at my mess

and my dog jumping over to dig holes in her lawn

we’d get fed up but never move

in spring my mother’s fruit trees would blossom

and by summer she’d have avocados putting a bend in the branches

on a good day she’d pass over a bag of stone fruit

and I might hand her a crisp green plume of collards

AGAINST MASTERY

give me no seat at the table

let no trembling hands lay food on my plate

let me lord over no one and nothing

not the dog curled up in my bed

not the land nor children who wander

through my care let me learn from the babies

and be always laughing at my ignorance

only humble discovery give me

and keep my eyes on the pattern of birds’ wings

breaking the blue overhead let me face

the ones I harm with open palms and let love

be the method and measure of my worth

keep my heart with my people

and the coal glowing beneath my feet

let me run and run and run and run

and let the flame of my torch never go out

I am here with you

to burn the house down

keep me to this cut me down

before you let me lose my way

NOTES

“Want and Love Are Not the Same Word” is a quote taken from Nicole Homer’s poem “The Overlap,” which can be found in her book Pecking Order.

“Journal Entry: ‘he made me feel like a drug addict’” is how Dr. Susan Moore, a Black doctor who died of complications from COVID-19, described being mistreated by her attending physician.

“Sometimes I Feel Like I’m Almost Gone” is a line borrowed from the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”

The title “His Powerful Hand” and the lines “I’m coming up / on the rough side of the mountain / I must hold to god” are borrowed from the gospel song “Rough Side of the Mountain.”

“Say It Wasn’t My Fault You Suffered” is a line from Toi Derricotte’s poem “Another poem of a small grieving for my fish Telly,” which can be found in her book The Undertaker’s Daughter.

“What Cannot Be Communicated to the Mother Cannot Be Communicated to the Self” takes its title and concept from psychologist John Bowlby, who studied Attachment Theory and Cognitive Behavioral Theory.

“Amen” is an erasure of my poem “Atonement” in my second book, Blessed are the Peacemakers.

“He’s all over me / and he’s keeping me alive” is a lyric from the song “He’s All Over Me” by Whitney Houston.

“Honor thy father and mother and your days will be long on this earth” is a line paraphrased from the Bible verse Exodus 20:12.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

American Poetry Review: “Against Mastery,” “For Devonte Hart”

Diode: “As Passed from Auntie to Auntie to You,” “When Spite Is the Only Thing That Feeds You”

Rosebud Magazine: “Here”

The Rumpus:“Journal Entry: he made me feel like a drug addict,” “Say It Wasn’t My Fault You Suffered”

The VIDA Review: “My Mother Fights for Every Last Dime of Her Mother’s Refund”

West Trestle Review: “Every Poem I Write I Ask Permission”

Rock and Sling Magazine: “Dear Gabriel Fernandez”

About the Author

Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers (2021), winner of the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and After Jubilee (2017), published by Boat Press. Brionne is a 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, a Hedgebrook Alum and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Their poetry has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poet’s “Poem-a-Day” series, The Sun Magazine, jubilat, and Waxwing among others. Brionne is the co-host of the podcast The Slave Is Gone, alongside poet Jericho Brown and Rogue Scholar, Aífe Murray. Off the page they go by “Breezy.”

About Haymarket Books

Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago. Our mission is to publish books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice. We strive to make our books a vibrant and organic part of social movements and the education and development of a critical, engaged, and internationalist Left.

We take inspiration and courage from our namesakes, the Haymarket Martyrs, who gave their lives fighting for a better world. Their 1886 struggle for the eight-hour day—which gave us May Day, the international workers’ holiday—reminds workers around the world that ordinary people can organize and struggle for their own liberation. These struggles—against oppression, exploitation, environmental devastation, and war—continue today across the globe.

Since our founding in 2001, Haymarket has published more than nine hundred titles. Radically independent, we seek to drive a wedge into the risk-averse world of corporate book publishing. Our authors include Angela Y. Davis, Arundhati Roy, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Eve L. Ewing, aja monet, Mariame Kaba, Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, Mohammed El-Kurd, José Olivarez, Noam Chomsky, Winona LaDuke, Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, Marc Lamont Hill, Dave Zirin, Astra Taylor, and Amy Goodman, among many other leading writers of our time. We are also the trade publishers of the acclaimed Historical Materialism Book Series.

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