American Sentences

NYU shorts run by without a shirt; nice abs... she knows already.

Does she tan because of insecurities or does she like the sun?

Summer starts when I slather on sunscreen so my brown doesn't blacken

Nerdly Musing

Sitting in the crook of 

the library that smells

of dusty knowledge 

that has been cramped up 

in the pages of books 

incarcerated in their shelves

I wonder

what these books 

would whisper in my ear

Would they display the wealth of knowledge?

Or encourage a never-ending greed for more?

Or would spend my life 

reading about the lives within the pages

only to end up buried in 

a grave of dirt

as the books are

buried under a

the negligent duvet of dust?

What am I?

I am birthed young and fresh 

Smelling of squid’s smudge 

I stay white as cream leaking from udders

Until I tan in time’s sun 

and sleep under a blanket of dust 

Rumpelstiltskin First Descent

On a day when the sun
shone through the pixilations of mist
I watched you
hidden by
my own curiosity

You sniffed the dew dangling
off a four leaf clover
and licked the dirt off
an earthworm
with the flick of a forked tongue

Squatting with
thighs bulging,
you bounced up like a frog
itching to meet its
dinner midway
in the sky
you lifted your hind leg
like a dog wanting piss
molten yellow gold
your foot twitched twice
to the right
And then stomped loud enoguh
prompting

Thunder to yelp with fear,
A volcano to pee its crater,
And the earth to rumble,
All protesting your rude awakening

The ground cracked open-- a egg cracked jagged--

And you skipped into the
ravine of the unknown
yelling "I'm home"
to your second cousins... twice removed

I blinked three times
And stood to trip
home so I could help my mother
make lemon bars
with a salty crust

After Our Talk

I'll melt into the varnish of
the wooden staircase,
so when you sit there with her
you'll only smell me.

Café Ole

I only feel beautiful
in brown countries
where the

beating sun wakes the melanoma 

in our skin 

where sentences begin with exclamations hanging 

from toes that dig into the sand strewn 

with seashells made of plastic 

and oil that foreign barges 

travel into bays filled with 

bananas and coconuts

I only feel beautiful 

in brown countries 

where I 

have no ethnicity that raises

eyebrows in milky foreheads 

that crinkle when they cannot match their 

proper language to my 

walnut skin and 

where I blend in for once

in my life indistinguishable and a 

perfect fit in a landscape of slave histories 

I only feel beautiful

in brown countries 

where 

I no longer feel the need to

obsessively slather sunscreen in my skin

because I can't stand the thought 

of turning black 

For you

Yesterday I saw

A brown, leathered, woman

Stress dug craters a’top her brow

Her shoulders

Slumped towards the

Ground

A floor streaken

With miniscule molecules

Of shit dragged through

The subway car

Her child

Shrieked like a banshee

His baby teeth

And vocal chords

Nails upon a chalkboard

He clawed her face

And yanked her shirt down

To expose

A t-shirt bra

Absent of lace

Bought in one of those ghetto bodegas

For you to be that woman,

That is my curse