The Black Maria | 
Late as usual, here's my #19in2019. I just realized after spending an hour on this image, that I fucked up and forgot to add one, The Black Maria. It's so good. Just read it.
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Late as usual, here's my #19in2019. I just realized after spending an hour on this image, that I fucked up and forgot to add one, The Black Maria. It's so good. Just read it.
"We / rode, / a slow unfurling of ourselves across / a hundred twenty miles, despite history, / despite warnings of colored kids / washed by books, or kerosene & lye / in the white yards of schools / far from their fathers / & the stars. And still, hundreds of us / tumbling out of our houses / to be half-raised."
-"Cooley High, Fifth Estrangement, 1991"
"The ghosts of children / from the Perris Indian School / did come down from the hills, all the way / from Riverside, to watch the odd quiet / of our take-leavings. Their hairs thick / with cactus & grave dirt. The prickly pears of their mouths warning, / *Some parts of you / will / die there.* I can still see it all / so clearly now. The school gate is—a carving / knife."
-"Cooley High, Fifth Estrangement, 1991"
"I guess it‘s a funny thing, really, / how I can‘t hear Boyz II Men, / even the 90s bedroom countdown / & the color blue of Michael McCrary‘s / “Injection, fellas” without wanting / to cry. A real cry. Look! I‘ve slipped into / the surprise & trapdoor / of my own heartache / just like that. The Cooleyhighharmony / on repeat in the tape deck / as my mom & I drove up / to boarding school, my first year."
-"Cooley High, Fifth Estrangement, 1991"
-"luam /asa luam -- the afterworld sea"
Sorry about the small print. This was as big as I could make it on my phone.
"We all know // what happens next. Do not go. / But if you must, // risking what you will, then, / in a language that is my first // but not your first, & with what I know / & do not know, I will try to build // a shore for you here, a landing place, here / where the paper dreams // that you will last."
-"prayer & letter to the dead"
"Which is // my portrait? / The right hand // bleeding the page / for its marrowmarks // or the silence my left hand // inherits?"
-"prayer & letter to the dead"
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