Dreams

This is a “Poem of the Day” feature piece Can’t I be found in the dew-soaked grassOf my own open plainsWildflowers and yellow rosesStretched as far as the horizonSun gleaming on my black armsAnd big, country houseNot a lynched bodyHung from the low branches of a poplar treeOr blooded fields of cottonDrying the soil of

Privilege

Respectability has known me Since I knew my father He’d always told us Our bodies were things to hide Things only loose women gave away Women who represented the worst Our color had to give And then one day in Martin Luther King Jr. Library Dressed in brown corduroys, a long-sleeve blue shirt And a

Radical

When you have known only Blackness your whole lifeAs I haveWhen it has been written on your birth certificateCelebrated in your homeTaught in your classrooms—That long historyMarred by half a millennia ofTurmoil and trauma