~for 2020

Audre, have you never seen

A double rainbow rise & set in your

Backyard? I just did only after running

Here when breathing anywhere else

Started killing the We in me. Here, I gallop

10 miles like the palamino We are, unafraid of

Hay fields’ dank air after dark. Everywhere

Elsewise outside is death. I shut out the din

Of 55 buckshots ricocheting off sycamore limbs

& stride this wind until the synapses of We

Unchain our selves. Here, I am not hunted or

Hunter, need no consent not to speak. I will not

Answer calls. I will lie in these sleeves of grass,

Let garters heal my heels, coil my ankles,

Akimbo ussin, as they did all over Alkebu-Ian.

They neither tempt nor taunt like the “ally”

On the Zoom afterparty line I shouldn’t

Have joined last night. You look so sad,

He jeered, his pale mouth’s stink puckering

Like the bum he wishes We’d deign

To kiss. I stare blankly, no grin or grimace

In sight. We owe you nothing. In these bricked

& rowhouses, on this boundless land, paid

In full with whip-smart, bloodied resolve, We

Wrestle not with your feast for our famished

Imaginations. We so full, we get lost in this never-

Ending kaleidoscope, this color wheel

We’ve willed our way for ever & ever &