I KNOW MY WEDDING DAY WILL BE A CORONATION & A FUNERAL TOO

for Golden

I command the procession as any southern Black
widow would—coal laced, fangs erect, 

red velvet rippling underneath my abdomen sea-like.
Each bridesmaid, the kin in kevlar suits 

& the poplars in patent heels, leads the hem of my gown
down the aisle in their teeth. 

Cam carries me on his back, on his hip, like any father
without a child would. 

Traditions must die when we turn our backs to love
what cuts between our own self-hatred. 

For years I was an arachnophobe, who couldn’t forgive
our animal for its form. 

A dame who would only devour mates as defense–
less love. If I opened my mouth 

back then, I bet a boy bullied blue sat believing he
couldn’t gaze. girl. god. 

Faggots, meaning to grow up gawked at even by the smoke,
we wear our guilt gutted

on our gunmetal boots. Holstered. I guess, I am proof
that our fears molt as we 

get older. Look at me now, waltzing. I ate the submissive genders
of myself and became a diadem.

a fairy. a falling hour glass webbed to many myths & no carcass.
I am a ghost for marrying many 

selves & corralling us mandible misfits to celebrate?
How do you think I black like this? 

Widow like this? The apex ain’t in all of us. There was a door
at the bridge of a lover’s 

breastbone & my father’s surname. & I entered.

 

---

 

IF I WAS BEING HONEST

after Frank Ocean

Nigga / I want to know how to escape / the ship & theshoreside
The morning / saccharine & the American sacrifice / The nigga 

loyalty & ordained / lobotomies / Adulthood is full of old shit /
scuttle-happy adolescents / who forgot / their niggas 

can’t float in this dimension / My nigga
only after Sunday / My nigga 

only after / my mouth be a pulpit / for people’s / daydreams of me
For my family’s revival / in the cemetery of me / & Still these niggas 

be salve / slipping down my east coast / & Still my mother mutates
misconception with misunderstanding / She fears the nigga 

she son’d is stillborn / Y’all / country / & niggas want me in homes
healing / but some niggas want me / believing them a negus 

that parts the pitted rivers in us /
without therapy / We are all countryless niggas 

& still I think / If I dye
the beat in simple syrup / niggas 

will understand me / Every silly second / of depression’s sarcophagus /
Every second heartbeat / not surrounded / by sibling-nigga 

shit / By nerodivergent-nigga shit / I’ll be blunt at the end / probably
because of repetition / Cus a nigga 

don’t want to be immortal / just want to make it
to the joint / at the end / of the day / To niggas 

who’d take my body in / their whole mouth
& ask / Ain’t this god / Niggardly 

sanctification / I feel closest to dominion / when I’m not talking
about my mother / in every poem / About becoming the woman niggas 

flee states to understand / I don’t take the train away / to pray
for us anymore / but I’m still trying / to prove my niggas 

wrong / about my pronouns / & I
get it / progress & reprogram / reprogramming what niggas 

command / But I really want to be a God-nigga sometimes
so I can unmake peoples’ / memory of me / The nigga-truth 

is I can’t / can’t / can’t stand to sit by them
salting my river wounds / But I don’t say that / cus truth hurts niggas 

in my family / Truth is I had a bag packed once / behind the shed &
my parents permission / Behind the niggas 

I would’ve left / & Truth is I would’ve settled to be
an angel if I had a heaven to go to / A Niggavana 

I still face niggas who don’t know / I can feel the Earth’s axis tilting
everytime I cross the Mason-Dixon / cus we don’t choose our niggas 

or who our demons are / But I want to choose /
how my angels remember / my nigga 

How their ancestors found the sea / because I remember
every Commandment / I’ve broken / Every night 

Twin & I walked to the 7 / off Bethel / off Parkway /
out The Woods / to spend our last nigga 

nights nickling our subway fare / so we can belong
in new cities / I’ve learned to say Nigga 

I don’t like repeating myself /
instead of I’m hurting / by my shoreline nigga 

cus I can find my mother tongue / buried in me sometimes
I’ve known Hampton / since I could spell n-i-g-g-a 

& it’s still feeling Ferrari / foreign now
Like the polaroids niggas 

used to / window at the public library /
Northampton might still know me / as its nigga

cus I can tilt my head back / to the past
& still look at ourselves the same / But blood-niggas / 

my family don’t lift off on feelings / alone
Memories get coined / tokenized / nigger’d 

& Still I believe /
there are other nigga 

Bibles / being written / in this dimension
Cus I’m going to have a nigga’s 

kids one day / Kids who’ll love their uncles
Who will call me / Mom / Who’ll calls us niggas 

Who will look down on me / one day
& say / Golden / I found the sea my nigga.