What’s the matter?

We believe we are separate

from the Earth 

from each other

can’t see all the emptiness 

that connects us 

—

April PAD day 27: believe or don’t believe 

Questions

I have so many questions 

so much hurt to understand

but the only one that matters

is how do you open your heart?

— 

April PAD day 24: question

Assent

How lucky am I 

to be born 

with such beauty 

that you cannot 

look away

keep your hands off

keep your cat calls

in your mouth

must thrust your desire 

into the world

into me 

to hold for you

without my consent 

—

April PAD day 13 prompt: lucky or unlucky

Thoughtless

There is no thinking with

your heart, it 

only knows how to feel 

to beat, to 

keep driving love/life forward 

—

April PAD day 25: thought 

Love your neighbor

Love your neighbor

your good book says, but 

you believe your 

Middle Eastern messiah 

was miraculously white, feel affinity 

only toward those 

who look like 

you, not the ones he 

would have loved 

You pick and 

choose which teachings are relevant 

and none have 

anything to do with love 

—

April PAD day 20: love or anti-love 

Counting sheep

They corral us together

feed us the same

straw theories

knowing there’s 

no substance 

nothing to stomach

but plenty to chew on

as they try 

to convince us

that the wolves

are our caretakers

they think we’re asleep

and because they can’t 

tell us apart 

think we don’t see 

when one of us is slaughtered

Waiting to breathe

She doesn’t pass 

wouldn’t want to

always seems to be 

holding her breath 

dark skin a beacon 

beaming Blackness without apology 

a light to 

her sisters and 

lure to lynch mobs

that could be 

around any corner 

constantly calculating the risks 

of her brilliance

in this world

and who it might attract 

—

April PAD Day 17 prompt: waiting 

Conviction

The voices of the dead

cannot speak, but

if they could they'd 

rise up through the throats

of the jury 

"guilty," convict the killer cop

—

April PAD day 12: use three of the following six words: convict, great, play, race, season, and voice

Get out of the car

 For 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario

He was pepper sprayed  

for questioning an authority

not his commanding officer

peppered in "what's going on?" 

as things got heated

"get out of the car"

“just comply” he was 

told, take orders like 

a good soldier, who's 

never told when they're 

marching toward death 

"get out of the car"

forced to the ground 

choking and confused 

still in his camos

too fatigued to continue 

asking "what's going on" 

The officers are out 

of the car, guns drawn

too heated to see the

temporary license plate 

in the window 

the whole reason they 

pulled him over 

in the first place 

—

April PAD day 10: get (blank) 

Human/nature

Wouldn’t it be nice if 

we saw ourselves as animals

instead of projecting humanity onto 

creatures incapable of our cruelty 

—

April PAD Day 9: persona

Mirrors

We can only 

see ourselves in the reflections 

off other people 

— 

April PAD day 8 prompt: metaphor 

The crooks

Inspired by Resmaa Menakem's work and teachings ... and a recent podcast he was on

Your body was 

not your own

it served at 

the pleasure of 

the kings and elites

their feasts and 

festivities fueled by 

the blood and 

sweat and tears 

of laborers and peasants

whose skin was 

darkened by dirt 

sun-baked in fields 

you weren't allowed 

to ever eat from

servitude and subordination

a birthright passed 

down through your 

bloodied European bodies

and only deemed white

once you were 

able to turn

that generational rage 

outward, to reclaim 

a sovereignty of self

stolen from you

by stealing the 

land, languages, lives 

of pigmented people 

on a new land 

you would rape

and pillage the 

same way your 

predecessors were on

your own ancestral homelands

--

April PAD Day 7 prompt: villain

The dark side

He doesn’t like 

that the world has changed 

can’t fathom why 

the superheroes of

his youth would be anything 

other than the 

color marked “flesh”

in his childhood crayon box 

Can’t see that

his own progeny 

might see themselves in these 

powerful new protagonists 

whose pigmentation was 

previously shaded  onto only the 

most shady characters 

never allowed to 

step fully into the light 

—

April PAD day 6 prompt: change or don’t change

Spare change

Do all coins matter or 

do you care

about some more than others? 

—

April PAD Day 6 prompt: Change or don’t change 

Getting served

The first time 

I left the country 

I thought I was a savior 

serving the happiest 

people I’d ever met

with my Christian charity

assuming they needed 

my help to fix

problems created by Christian 

men, Manifest Destiny

centuries of peasantry still

struggling under elite rule 

as if my

babysitting money could solve 

circumstances I couldn’t understand 

—

April PAD Day 5 prompt: the first (blank)

Fat cats

Those who built the maze

are the ones

calling it “the rat race”

Taking us out of cages 

to chase poisoned 

cheese and thinking we’re free 

—

April PAD day 4 prompt: active 

Read-lining

Our wires haven’t been crossed

the power lines  

are in completely different counties

—

April PAD Day 3 prompt: communication 

Waterboarding

Would you love me more 
if this body was thinner 
his thinning hair thicker
her thickness less sexy
their sexiness more tame
his tameness more fierce
my fierceness less fiery 
her fire more water
our watered down selves 
so dampened
that we drown ourselves 
without seeing you’re 
holding our heads underwater 

—

April PAD - Poetic Asides Day 2 prompt: what does the future hold 

What a pretty name

Hi, my name is
not nearly as important
what you call me 
behind closed doors, closed 
minds, or closed hearts 

where you fetishize an 
exoticness that once threatened
your grandparents so much 
that they sent mine
to Arkansan incarceration camps 

emerging years later with 
broken hearts and steeled
wills, a thirst to 
prove their Americanness/humanity,
become a model minority 

modeling resilience after abuse,
white-adjacent acceptability, and 
generational trauma embedded deep 
in the DNA that
became this face you 

now deem desirable

— 

April PAD 2021

Poetic Asides Prompt Day 1: introduction poem