star-apple (Gratitude Poem #23)

star-apple

For Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

After Audre Lorde’s “What It Means to Be Beautiful”

i.

bloom your name around my mouth

stoned tongue move bolder

teach me there is nothing

that cannot be said

shown

grown

bloom

your name

ii.

those who wont face

the taste of leaving

will lie about medusa’s

dreadlocked freedom

and the secret of everything beautiful

will fear us

freezer burn their own dreams

at the sound of our love

will break neck not look

reach for stories turned sword

talk bad about truth behind their own backs

headless

iii.

how dare we

prize spit over toothpaste

breathe common air classless

zip mudslides into minis

wear chains like trinkets

how dare we know

how to tuck home into cleavage

and bring it out

flower magic

how dare we be

free

all out loud

and in public

and shit

iv.

well

from my bad back

to your braced embrace

there is clear cold water

bright bubble brilliance

unbitten by kidnappers

who nightmared on mermaids

seasoned in iron

sludge and the sperm they say got us here

razor wire and the riddle of rice

there is everything

here in the place we pull from

diaspora drownable

untouchable sweetness

there is baptism here

v.

dear leah

this morning

scoliosis and a storm coming

i am breathing

homesick smells

what the ocean steals inside plants

what salt stays

with those of us who survive

and i feel so fucking strong.

love lex

***********************

Leah! Brownstargirl. You are the truth. This is the best way I know how to say it. Thank you so much for being on this journey with me, in the specific sense and the general sense. Poet warrior femme shark allstar all the way home.

Writing to you on my first morning in St. Croix feels so write and so lucky. How blessed am I to have such an audience as you. You inspire me in so many ways. Blood related because we carry so many of the same ancestors in our hearts, through our veins, reach for them and each other with our writing (cooking, folding, loving) hands. You are a source of strength in my everyday and a grounding force on a day like this where (tropical storm on the horizon and black feminist bliss ancestral occupation on overdrive) I feel like I could literally blow away.

I love you so much!!!!

Always,

Lex