home remedies
like my tea
most of my favorite things have honey in them somewhere
we are dying like the bees
the threat makes it sweet
i add lemon because i like a bit of bitterness
my mother used to eat them when she was pregnant with me
at twenty-five
i like to imagine her quartering a lemon that she grabbed from my grandmother’s tree
and sucking the juice out
holding the pulp to her teeth,
yellow skin flexing around her naturally straight smile
and arching against her lips
i had to get braces in college
she says she can never forget a smile,
a choreographed ritual of memory like a tequila shot
my mom tells me she drank until she was four weeks along, carrying me
coming home can be bitter sometimes
like crushed garlic in a catalina shot glass, faded from air drying in the dishwasher
with brandy from the back of the china cabinet,
a pinch of cayenne
a squeeze of lemon, and a small burst of honey at the bottom
a sweet tail for the beast
this is supposed to keep the sick out
like vicks on the soles of our feet when we sleep
some things really are a cure-all if you believe in them hard enough
my grandmother thinks i don’t believe in anything anymore because i stopped going to church
but i still put honey on a washcloth when i wish to clean my tongue
white rum diamonds
you left the abyss when you became a man
bearing the body of that scarlet bird, your country
lanky, with that open road smile
granny says you had a head of sugar, like sweet cakes
your curls turning into themselves like currant rolls
enticing the eyes of any hungry women
who passed you by
the smell of fresh baked and mother’s hands
you said there was never another woman like her
auntie says you had a mouth like ginger, bitter and sturdy
sensible, but sensitive
always eager to offer the healing of a word
from a shy boy body, lurking lower
the angry of red mango
sweet, fermenting, hot
you returned to the abyss when you became a father
covering your head in the diamonds that shrouded your upbringing
they were in the rainfall here
you brought back an image of what you had created
you made me red like you with your fears and your fire
heavy lips of sugar plum,
pouting at the whole world’s hatreds
you brought me here when i became a woman
to see where i was mined from
the holding hands that had polished you
for the strangling of my country
your palms filling with second lifelines
i have no home
just a mine
but you can always go back to the abyss
with the lightness of rum on your tongue
and call it your own
the daughter of the waters
my daddy was a raindrop my mama was a river
falling and rushing and
falling rushing
and falling and and rushing and
transparent heavy
and falling and and rushing and
falling rushing
and falling and rushing
until he landed here from a bank
on this strange ground, soaked of scrub boards and bar soaps
in some other spillings not the same the second time, giver of shivers
he is oxblood boots on black gum soles she is bare feet on a shore
my daddy cigarette stained, black gum soul my mama bare to me
neither one of us can sing for shit and we are both unsure if i should tell her
but he can tell you who a star is but she can show you where the dark is
never said it to me but i know it never said it to me but i saw it
i know it. i know it like when i felt him i saw it. i saw it like when i felt her drown,
evaporating next to me, sucked up by the sun the sound of a sink outrunning a basin
swallowed by the sky til she was ready to cry . swallowed by her shore til she was empty
again again
falling and rushing and
falling rushing
and falling and rushing
into shallow beds from her deep bed
and they never married
the river drinks the rain and
the rain drinks the river
and the river drinks the rain and
they never married
and the rain drinks the river and
the river drinks the rain
and the rain drinks the river
and i pour from them both when i am thirsty for cycles of my own
murky as it is
i can see myself in the thames
rising bridges over still waters, a brown fluidity flowing through a divided thing
but i can teach you what the water is
never said it to me but i felt it
i felt it. i felt it like when i was a puddle of the pacific myself
passing you in a city that they have never been to
spilling pools of muddled pain and unspecific stains
again
crashing and
crashing
and crashing
in beds that do not belong to me
steam-powered
steam rises from the remnants of a lionfish in the sun
like thick ropes spun by gold hands
i am your first born, unsurrendered
all of the women you don’t notice in the background are me
and my bronzed flesh,
forming stones and spilling structures
a sentence means nothing to a bitch like me
drowning is what’s usually happening below any great thing
i built this empire
i hand-stitched silver in all those dark clouds
when it rains
it rains and rains harder and some of us drown
and some of us drown
and some of us float like smoke
and some of us choke on our own tongues
and some of us die too young
and some of us
rise with the tides and become earth-toned tiger stripes
on the sand
smelling of death and the sea
the making of everything, and only made of steam
for writers who quote toni morrison in aging lecture halls
looking at a fish tank,
are you the glass or the water?
are you what is inside
or what is holding it?
are you filling
or being filled?
do you want folks to press up against you
or be submerged
with all of your creatures
either way, the thing in you is living.
will you feed it
or eat it
or free it
or let it
die
and flush it?
do you move with the tapping of the glass
or the swish of the fish
carnival plastic bags and early mourning
where is the current
coming from?
tell me what you are willing to touch
and where you are willing to be touched
last night in heaven
heaven didn’t really feel like home to me
there were too many white men
not enough of us
i had to stop going
after one of them called me “sis”
now i come to places like this
i was never really welcome in church
too many of us
crossing our arms in crucifixions
heaven got shut down a few months ago
there are too many black trans women
who are told to call a grave a home, a place to rest
if i could, i would live at pxssy palace
overwhelmed in all the best ways
paralysis can be pleasurable
anything can be erotic when you can enjoy living
heaven doesn’t exist anymore
but i’ll always come back here
because there are so many of us
who need this, a place to rest