Donnie Moreland

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Graduation

my daughter graduated kindergarten
she led the class in shouts and giggles

caps and gowns bounce as us parents whistle
Ms. Jackie calls her up first and says that we should be proud

“mom and dad, you’ve made a superstar
now Baby Joy, what do you want to be when you grow up”

my baby looks her up and down and back
to mom and me and proudly,

with her chest pointed above the big dipper
she says

I want to be a teacher
and another girl said a doctor

and another said a nurse
and the boy with the chunky twist

said a caped crusader
and another boy said a cop

and we sighed once
and a cop, said the next

and we sighed twice
two more Black babies

sold a pig pen as paradise
like the Black cop in my neighborhood

who musters the children that look
like his dread locked, deep blueberry skinned

seed if he were to fall in love
the right way

i see the Black cop muster the children
while puncturing their blueberry bubblegum

balloon races to orbit
i see the Black cop and i wish he never grew up

i wish he stayed a smile at kindergarten graduation
before his Ms. such & such

asked him what he wanted to be
i wish he said

a forever five year old
making gourds of blueberry clay

but somewhere between pick up sticks,
first kisses and pushups

somewhere between the pledge of allegiance,
student loans and this macho thing

a Black cop sprouted from the roots where
curiosity was salted over

i see that the Black cop
sees me and he does not smile

i see the Black cop
and know we are at war though

it might be more honest for us to kiss —
this is more the tension of field hands

because he cannot be my enemy
but I am his shadow

wearing a t-shirt of a naked Black woman
cradling a noose in the belly of the American flag

i am his shadow indeed
this brother might be, as George Jackson say,

“confused in a honest way”
but the Black cop has an honest weapon

posed as a German Shepherd
at the gates of Dachau

i see the Black cop
i see a Black man

but I have no time to wonder if he is a good man
I’m sure plenty of SS read their babies

the funny pages over pancakes
I’m sure plenty of IDF bring their

mothers flowers on their birthday
but the bombs reign like the gas falls like black boots

break Black necks through sidewalk cracks
so I have no time to wonder if this brother dripping in steel and blue is a good man

too many good men die between taking an oath
and taking a life

and I take my daughter’s picture
when she graduated kindergarten

she said she wants to be a teacher when she grows up
another girl said a doctor

and another said a nurse
and the boy with the chunky twist

said a caped crusader
and another boy said a cop

and all we did was sigh
i should have bought him a copy of Blood in my Eye

tell him to read page 41
the passage about the soldier —

the “new mxn, the new womxn”
a love letter about the new eyes for our daughters

— dark brown, with blueberry rings around the iris —
the home of hope for Black babies

in caps, gowns and glee
repurposed from Manillas and palm oil

in the shape of machetes and
story circles where they conjure folklore about consent

and victories
on the battlefield and in each other’s protection

and if I could remix the day
Ms. Jackie might say

“what do you want to be when you grow up?”
and in my daughter’s class, the babies would holler,

“uhuru”
“አርነት አወጣ”

“alaafiya”
“Ominira”

“liberated” in all
of its dialects

and if I could remix the day
all the Black cops would be stripped naked of their belts, batons

and badges and instead use their hands to rub their children’s
scalps with the oils from cocoa, coconut and mushrooms

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Crisis Care

On my walk home
I tread through enough Minnesota snow
to bury the night shift
I can’t separate the white of winter from the sterile lights above my head
Whether inside or outside, none of us can see God from here
The facility used to be a convent after all
& I have become an attendant to purgatory
someone threw up in their bed
someone broke in
someone threw their anti-psychotics down the hall and the hallway swallowed back
someone snuck into the day room and summoned me a djinn
someone knocked on their dresser drawer and the devil answered
from behind the walls
someone said they don’t like niggers
and stared at my crotch all through our mandatory interventions
someone installed one way mirrors in the kitchen
so all the dogs and dealers can watch me as television
I know I clock out but
I never remember the march home
By the time I walk through the foyer of my apartment building
the fingerprints of a patient who told me he’d blow his brains out after discharge
have leaked onto the welcome mat and turn miseries to water
I can’t shake his thumbs
After I wrote his day pass, he rubbed on my scalp as though I were a pet, and whispered that I
was his favorite ( we’re told never to lay hands on the sick )
all snow becomes a melting
But the stench of his t-shirt used twice as toilet paper
linger on my soft sports
and so I go crazy
I named the kitchen broom “married to Mantan” and snap my fingers while I sweep
I begin to add devil emoji’s to my clinical notes
I crab walk on the walls to the clinicians break room to play with spiders in the dark
I stare inside the paper cups we force feed risperdal and paxil for far too long
needless to say, I forget my role when I arrive on site
I nearly walk through the residents’ entrance
though I swear I just ended my shift
my name is called for boards
I no longer recall who is captive
the residents are told they’ll be no more cigarettes
& so they plotted a coup during Group DBT
but at least we are getting a pizza party on Thursday
My supervisor watches the news with glee
She likes to say that we’ll never be out of work,
especially with how greedily the country chews up her own children
and spits them out for us to cure

I no longer recall who is captive
The night shift forgets spring
and so have I

My waking life is snowfall
and my dreams have become a white room

---

…always ours

I cannot write a poem about Jeffrey
Epstein. I can only write a poem about
pressure and bones. It takes such little
but very intentional bending to burst a babe’s
pelvis. I cannot write a poem about Jeffrey
Epstein. I can only write about the ungovernable
anguish in the wide, soundless mouth of a little
girl with too much weight on her bird chest. I cannot
write a poem about Jeffrey Epstein. I can only write a poem
about James Baldwin and those he prophesied would not
love their own children. I cannot write
a poem about Jeffrey Epstein. I can only write a poem about
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter and the duty of poets
to draw a blanket over the naked nipples of Black children
who are too young to be full of fluids that aren’t
their own and in holes that should be kept intact. I
cannot write a poem about Jeffrey Epstein. I can only write
about my great grandmother’s baby dolls their
husbands didn’t allow them to keep in the house
as reminders that their brides were mere fledgelings.
I cannot write a poem about Jeffrey Epstein.
I can only write about Baldwin’s boy body in the
lustful lonely brush of Beauford Delaney who refused
to differentiate between disquiet and sheepishness
or the rose petals Jimmy plucked off the uncertain
grin of boys in his own groomed, survival blooming.
I cannot write a poem about Jeffrey Epstein.
I can only write about the decay of “Jane Doe”
and the metamorphosis of Reshona Landfair
out of Robert Kelly’s grip

---

every single thing

about Houston, the unhoused, the bayou that swallows their bodies, and who sent them to heaven in the first place

a’int you belonged to someone
maybe some who too pay the toll
to valhalla on their backs
down a bayou bed
buried in the muck
and shoelaces
we toss overboard
and
from our driver side windows
might your murder make you a homebound thing
i don’t know your name but I know
someone gave you one and
someone had to feed you first
as a promise of what’s owed
and what’s already been paid for
in the delivery room
someone swaddled you safe
i’m sure
but here we be
some many moons since safeness was a
cradle rockin’
you right and gentle
to where your reapers wrestled you from your hiding place
where you’ve waited on
both the storm
and a hunger to pass
they grabbed you by your feet
and took care to make bloody mess of your
private parts
and hand lines
might your murder make you a man
say your people
in the paper
your lover or homie or friend or
a brother who loved you
in blankets and bus tokens
that was your ace boon coon
they killed him too
might your murder make a noise
maybe as obnoxious as
bach’s symphony in g minor
boom boom breakin’ under the underpass
to keep you from a second’s sleep
every mayor here been a new cruel motherfucker a’int it
commissioning serrated block edges
to occupy more seats on a park bench
than we got asses to sit
a war on respite
which is why i seen you snuggled in a glad trash bag
on the sidewalk off memorial drive
might the ragged flip flops leftover the next day
be a tombstone
i presume
a’int that the blues
but you keep moving
maybe that’s how they found you
moving
till they caught you
pushed
and punched you
until there was enough fingerprints
on your body
to identify a culprit
might your murder be a found thing
not in poems
and barrel fire funeral songs
or folklore about serial killers who kill
less than your killer
may your murder be a found thing
in police reports
though for all we know it was the night patrol
who shot your body until your organs bloomed
in a fireworks display of
please stop
please say one hand
while the other
try to hold on to your spleen and kidneys
they supposed to be an inside thing
not outside of your body
begging mercy until mercy
was a killing kiss from a shotgun
might your murder be a fact
not a fiction written in death colored eyes
and molested other parts
hind parts
burnt parts
they burnt you
and hung you from a bridge
like a firefly caught up in the grill of
a pickup truck
whose bed might have bed
your body and your buddy’s
dead and desecrated
i’m sure blue catfish get treated better around these parts
hell sometimes they release them back into the bayou
who of us can say they seent you
of the faces stood stolen stone in the middle of
the downtown square
you was hollerin’ about a mother
who may or may have never knew you
hollerin’
hoping maybe for a monday hello
or even a head nod
anything to be a living anything
more than them
flip-flop remains
might your murder make new rubble
a’int you belong to those who knew you
a friend maybe or lover baby
to someone else down by buffalo bend
singing war stories of stealing food
or maybe a smile
at hermann park
from a little boy who look
like you
dressed in your yesteryear boy body
he even strike up a conversation
until his momma hustles the honeyed angel away
from the homeless man
who got to be a boy again
with that child’s love and definition
as a living
and a mattering
and an
anything
every single thing
before you was
a hunter’s trophy
without a trace

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Banner Art:
Photo by Andrew Valdivia on Unsplash, 2020