Waterbaby. Nikki Wallschlaeger

wiring.

      That spark is no good.

      Come sit with me for a

      minute. My feet full of

      diluted axe fluid.

      Thought I heard you say

      everything is medicine.

      But that’s just hearin

      what you wanna hear

      This Body Keeps the Keys

      My dear sparkly-eyed polyps,

      I don’t have enough juice to

      be the sole joist of this family

      today,

      so I dream of claw-foot tubs

      where I splash unapologetic

      on how deep this umbilical gets

      slumped from getting over,

      hair unwashed, toenails randy

      as hell because I am sincerely

      mothered the fuck out, so tired,

      this mothering body,

      shellac lying facedown on a

      coastline ashing & mottled

      pockmarked canker sorrel

      no good pictures of myself.

      Skinbag workhorse bb creamery,

      constant upkeep of management

      cultivation of self-care cosmetic

      Black pride goddess goddamn!

      This shit gets tiresome putting so

      much effort into what doesn’t last,

      sometimes I want to retire shave

      my head be a nun or a monk,

      just so I can forget all the years

      time bludgeoned so I could look like

      somebody else swimming around

      in their own pallid wheel of tears.

      Yemaya, what is to become of us.

      I drag my body around lovingly but

      it still won’t let me go

      Dirt Floor

       for May Ayim (1960–1996)

      The overseers are buried aboveground in containers that won’t

      incinerate, and the workers who made the stones to fit their bodies,

      dead from lung disease, are stalked by the heavy, wet coughs of their

      bosses.

      In the shaky global clay, the coral reefs are dying from pneumonia. My

      grandfather packed crates of blank tombstones at the granite quarry

      for a living and the sea being what it is speaks of these connections. I

      know when I’m being haunted,

      I know when I’m being asked. So we search together through the

      trenches of buried papers, brown women shoveling, worried for the

      health of our backs. We are a bouquet of spines pressed into the

      dirt floor, gathered in strength for you, so you can rest here without

      loneliness.

      Valley of Things

      Hang your head when you walk

      yesterday’s news is greener

      to survive ham with ideas

      of a common holiness

      decisions to make about

      what’s going to siphon

      off your thoughts

      fuse giddiness to

      the citizen elective

      creature by creature

      when a very young child

      throws down an object

      it’s beautiful to watch

      they don’t know about

      the value of thingification

      hanging over the riverbanks

      a good poet prays to nature

      I brush out tangles during

      graceful animal hunting season

      sometimes we hear a crush

      figure out a daily schedule

      read tortured philosophers

      listen to James Booker on repeat

      Black Woman on a Plane, Twenty-First Century

      Minutiae in a bowl,

      jury-rigged hand

      in need of a drink.

      The flight attendant

      said, “It’s on me,”

      I must’ve looked

      like I needed one.

      Such a rough climb,

      wobbly as the sun

      during Leo season.

      Come to find out

      a brand new plane

      is hot to handle.

      The first breath,

      crucial, coughs.

      My favorite path

      of looking winds up

      when I’m in the air.

      There’s no way

      to vacuum-seal death

      up here I suppose,

      even though I’ve never

      felt the urge to buy

      a traveling pillow.

      If something develops,

      if our machine defects,

      I’ll ask if I can hold

      the hand of the woman

      who gave me a drink.

      Then it’s time to land

      like nothing happened,

      the captain standing

      at the door with his crew.

      He’s younger than I am,

      a baby-faced white boy.

      We don’t know his name,

      or where he came from.

      Prayer Sonnet

      Sewn up again in a data harvest meadow

      moving through me as pelvic bowl thunder

      to learn how to laugh at their indifference

      Revenge of the Chattel is not being shown in

      the popular gendarme art houses

      blood heavy as the iron binding us together

      Public