it’s not just me. Be clear,
the whole squad Woo Woo. Kin
stay lifted up in metal clouds. Or
knuckle deep in earth. Talking
about how they periods right
around the corner and what that means
alongside Chani’s latest Mercury read.
Shira can’t wait to tell you
about the dream she had.
Big eyes growing wider at each detail.
Freaked out and charged at the spirit’s hooks
deep in her brain’s knowing signal.
It all connected. Courtney paints
one wall miss-my-daddy red
in every new home she stays in.
Morgan say she wants to find love
this year, keeps a rose quartz between
her tits. Gio the 3rd grade teacher
in Bed-Stuy use to end her emails
‘bet you love could make it better.’
A week after the 314th police killing this
year, Jenna mixes up a tincture of charcoal,
lemon, and lavender in little spray bottles.
Hands them out to us after burgers in Harlem.
Woo Woo. Jozie got her man’s EKGs tatted
on her ring finger. 3 years since he crossed
and you best believe she correct when she
talk about him in the present-tense. Gerloni
keeps a frothy pot of black eyed peas boiling
on News Years day. Marlee staves off the yeast
with a garlic clove in her puss. You can’t tell us
shit. We always down for the miracle.
The regular-as-fuck dawn making brand new
the farm of our hearts. Jessie, the filmmaker
slash jewelry maker slash teaching-artist, dangles
a dried out tea bag above her nose, gapes
intently at this new face of God appearing
right before her like, isn’t this just
the most beautiful thing
you’ve ever seen?
Angel Nafis is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012). She earned her BA at Hunter College and is an MFA candidate in poetry at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Anthology, The Rumpus, Poetry magazine, and elsewhere. Nafis is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, The Millay Colony, the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has represented NYC at both the Women of the World Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam. Founder and curator of the Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon she is also half of the ODES FOR YOU TOUR with poet, musician and visual artist Shira Erlichman and with poet Morgan Parker, she runs The Other Black Girl Collective, an internationally touring Black Feminist poetry duo. Facilitating writing workshops and reading poems globally, she lives in Brooklyn.