A Brief Meditation On How To Breathe
as a boy who wears black as skin,
i’ve learnt three words all my life /
three ways to not get under a cop’s
knee: cry, hide, die —& leaving breathe
behind isn’t a mistake / it’s a sign that
even breathing carries a fine for people
of your color. Nowadays, all we check
is a cop’s shoe for an anatomy of a body’s
response to soil / how many men still
carry their breaths around / how many
more will lose theirs tomorrow, to a
wet carnation of who peels a man’s
skin better. In each scenery, Godot
never appears / we become a rosary of
swollen beads / supplicating to God, to
christen this color I wear anything but
black. For a black man, everywhere is
summer. rigged. fractured…
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