Explore Poems: Social Commentaries

I caught her on reruns—Nichelle Nichols
from the original Star Trek series. She was
Black like me. …

I am a child convinced I am a worm.

This alarms people.
I am given a rosary
to guide me. Told I am…

here
near the entrance to the subway
the underground
we stand in each other’s eyes
once lovers
now …

These days, freedom
means: no shame.

What she calls
your cock rises
at its name, invisible

as wind…

manifold we tippytoed
niminy-piminy out of the enormous green door

and into the money

monkeys in …

Israel’s started
bombing
Gaza again
I don’t know
where to put it
in relation
to the ordinary
sadness…

we would take the train to brooklyn
leaving the bronx
down through harlem
out to prospect park
bergen…

in cuba
a dark skin woman asks me
if i’m from angola
i try to explain in the no spanish i know
that…

when trees bend funny and out of shape
when lightblue skies turn blueblack gray
hungry winds will
knock…

in the early twenties
a boat brought
my father to america
his first impressions
were spoken in spanish

years…

andre’s father
was from haiti

he was a happy man
who kept a jar
of white people
in his window

kept…

i suppose i should be
grateful to the white man
letting me out. where can
a black man in america go…

“I can’t breathe,” he said.
But there was no air.
Only the absence of trees
and rope. The swaying
of…

Dear America, my love.
If my blackness turns to fruit
do not pull it from the vine;
let it grow from…

gaza at daybreak
dogs sniff among the ruins
the graves are multiplying

I want to ask you if you ever wanted to leave.
If you can see yourself living somewhere other than here…

I was the girl who worked behind the counter at the skate shop. Never stepped on a skateboard, but could…

I . seated at a table for two inside Caffè Florian Venice

The leaders gather 
around to choreograph 
every desert bloom.
Another annexation, 
another standing settler…