photo by Alex Lear

You Won’t See This On Television

(to nia/to black women)

i have a boxcar of feelings for you, raw as afterbirth, unsubtle

as the sheriff delivering a summons or rev. jamison’s sermon

railing against false gods, except there is nothing illegal nor mystical

about my commitment to publicly wash myself, no dirty linen,

no putting on airs, only a purity, sharp as the in rush of your breath

after my lick suck on the thick erect of your nipple thrust

or the distinctive pride of my willingness to be poor whenever

being rich signifies selling my principles or our people

though many of us may sometimes barter our bodies

for a mere moment’s pleasure or the morseled promise

of a material trifle, still, regardless of our life’s relative lightness

or the near unbearable burden of historic auction, the intimacy

of blackness continues not as a thing, but rather is eternally evidenced

as an act of freedom, the realization of love’s arc of giving

—kalamu ya salaam