November 27th, 2020 Poems – Center for New Americans

Black Friday

After the Thanksgiving day,

The thunderbolt divides the black sky

Unleashing the nuggets of black hole

Of desires of “Must haves”

That can’t be bleached away.

The black Friday has a sundry of cousins

Almost looking, sounding, and smelling alike,

And blind us trapped in one-way alley

Clawing our way out

Stumbling.

Black is black, none other

Absorbing all lights,

And all colors,

End in the black

Home of spectrum

On Friday.

Yenna Yi

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Can We?

Can we get back to being neighbors

Once all this is done?

Maybe.

Everyone on

Tenterhooks, (which aren’t what I thought they were), till then.

Only the animals act normal, neither politics nor pandemics

Getting between them. It will take some

Effort, but I’m

Thinking we can do this.

Heck, once you set your mind to it,

Even an acrostic’s not that ha

Rd.

-P Crosby

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Rock Steady

When she opens her mouth

I hear a beat

that inspires my heart

to entrain

conjoin

become one

I hear music

that makes me beautiful

and move like a geisha

a mermaid

a harem girl

a soughing wind

ALEX in FLASHDANCE

I hear words

that make me a strong,

powerful

independent

smart

smartass

kickass

female

that makes men turn

and look at me

and marry me

then have to back away

‘cause I’m too much trouble

Aretha – you rock

in the most respectful

intense

way

No zoomin’ you.

Isabell VanMerlin

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Invitation

I am kneeling. You are kneeling close to me.

Our skins touch. Maybe we were born here.

There is a line of bodies kneeling

that leads beyond the vanishing point.

All our naked knees kneading the earth, our bread.

It is night. The sky is porcelain black and the iris of each star’s iridescence is an

invitation.

Our heads are hatless. Our feet shoeless. Dark settles on our shoulders.

Her weight, an intersection.

Air moves, shifts through and among us, supple traveller too.

The desert is still. Cautious. Weighing each soul’s imprint. Carbon and water

and sorrow.

Her beige body, indigo in dark, stretches

Grain and chafe making more room for more bodies—

Bodies bending the way they do when kneeling

Awkward. Almost impossible not to lean one way or the other.

The desert sand’s still warm from sun’s singe.

And we are all waiting. We are waiting together—

Perhaps for our invitation from some singular star’s signal.

On our hot knees, hatless and shoeless.

Leaning and quiet. Awkward and filled with the harrow of our

humanness

– Lindsay Rockwell