thottin’ on fountain drive
in may
the heat fester just ova asphalt
hot
we play rough
outside
the pushas house
a thumpin bunch of brick
the bass
leavin nem speakas
like ghosts
rattlin our bones
fo climbin to high heaven
somebody mama callin
down the block
we all look,
scared we dun missed
a midday curfew
long forgot
ground can’t make
it’s mind up
sometimes ‘is stone,
sometimes ‘is tapioca
& blunt ash
neighbor boi
ask me if I
seen a dick befo
& I blush
but I ain’t say no
she ain’t seen one
neither
but watches her
brother get dressed,
envious
wishin the sock
she had
tucked behin
‘nem panties
was flesh
I duck
with her
behin a bush
silent
as the day moses left it
she got fingers
in my thighs
teeth on my neck
& heat everywhere
I shiver
skin raisin isself
up like braile
alluva sudden
‘is 5pm
& this time
my momma callin
imma be ya man now
shawty
she say fo I go,
tongue trippin over
hood slurry & boi bite
she kiss me
niggahard
hand rough in my braids
like she seen her brother do
her breasts & my breasts
pettin each other,
makin nice
‘tween the slick sweat
man I swear
I swear
I swear.
Freedom Song #12: Yellow
okay, yea i got them cheddar chompas! So what? I’m yuck mouthed
but I smell good. I love me, unto the very tooth
of the thing— My crooked, crooked mouth of daffodil
enamel, school buses biting the half of a sun, yellow & I guess
I still sing, because I am the birdGod. My eye is upon myself, clockin’. I am as still
as the second hand. Me, the metronome. I masturbate in my mother’s heels & laugh
the print of my thumb into my softest fool self. Oooo, I just love me so
dangerous. I could live forever, like this. A hazard in heels, naked and sprawled wet with sin.
Black as in, what it means to touch a belly & rejoice: Oh, god. Oh, Me. Oh, yes.
Gxrl as in laurel or a dress of blue-Black and white-Gold. Hah! Damn I’m slick.
Damn, I spill the thick of me, and it is not blood. I’ll say it as many times as I see
fit. Oh, Great Black Death. thank you for giving the poet something to hunger after.
A place to kick off her shoes. I protest in the tradition of the maternal: my hand meeting my other hand between my thighs. This here is a freedom song. I know not why a caged thing would ever say my name.
my first love, confused for perennial
a week after you tried suicide on like a string of pearls, i found you
at my piano & barefoot, nappy in summer lust, your mouth
a prism for me, & i conjure you from your late bed, into a morning broken
upon staccato & denim, hi cut, slashed to pieces, dammit i loved you &
everything in the mouth of a song is a song & fuck if we knew what love
wasn’t & good ecclesiastical hands, be my map & how could anyone forget
about the honeysuckle & in summer, the heat
is [never] about lust, you didn’t die & justice wrapped like a fist wet
with honey & kissed too soft, wounded with the feather of the thing
& listen; August is the worst month for funerals, can we try again later
& maybe Spring is terrible, too & never mind the date, just stay & opposites
attract like teeth & protest & please & patience
& paternity tests & i petition the child prophet of my mother’s god
& quell my fear in faith & read her palm with gardenia petal & sound out
the word that means “he who runs from his legacy into orchards of orange
peel & two dollar wine”. I haven’t misplaced
the honeysuckle in the field & underneath the mud are leaves,
my lovers names & very carefully i pluck them, the fangs of the poem
& wait until the water is boiling & examine the constitution
under a microscope, find in it a recipe for ruined clocks & yes
my mourning is long: everything dies and so does the fragile thing i suckled
with you in our backyard, the sun
at our necks. it died too, the sun & zora meant what she said when she told us of the years
that ask us questions, how time stretches on for decades
unanswered.
Poet, essayist and cultural strategist Aurielle Marie is an Atlanta native and a child of the Deep South. She received her bachelor's in Social Justice Strategy and Hip-Hop Theory from the Evergreen State College, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. Aurielle’s poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in the TriQuarterly, Southeast Review, Black Warrior, BOAAT Journal, Sycamore Review, Adroit Journal, Vinyl Poetry, Palette Poetry, and Ploughshares. She's received invitations to fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA Voices, and Tin House. Aurielle is a 2017 winner of the Blue Mesa Review poetry award, and she’s the Lambda Literary 2019 Poetry Emerging Writer-in-Residence. She won the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writers Award for Poetry.