When we do everything
for which the moon is named empty
nobody can tell me a damn thing
I’m the offspring of a shadow
and don’t care who knows it
I sit on the stoop
listening to asphalt hued boys
chasing everything
until the street lights come on
my hands stained red with
the corner store’s offering
my father sets the dust free
from his dented music
just in time for the summer
home is a loud song and no ash for miles
I’ve known a trumpet to unstitch my father
he becomes a cloudless storm
an eloquent light craving thunder
When it’s like this
can’t nobody tell me shit
fists come and I bloom
into the freshest eclipse
my body is one long dare
a bet I always win
Every church sings
until the night pales in comparison
until everything dead inside us
is a light worth praising
until we remember
that Heaven is a Black name
NEGROTOPIA #2
Is there anywhere/that does not wish us dead?/Is there anywhere that belongs to us/so completely/that we cannot be buried in it?/there wasn’t/so we became the oasis/our damn selves/when the thirst for home/became overwhelming/held our lovers/and said nothing of the desert/except to touch their skin/the way sand sings/across itself/so we were the music too/which means/the silence belongs to us /in this dark fleshed nirvana/this Black place/this paradise/where nobody is ever lost/forever/we made it all/and kept it/every wound/became a returned lover/we gave each ghost a new name/and danced/ in the music of it/until the steam of our bodies/grew so thick/we named it cousin/so the sun spilled gold/and we drunk off the horizon/faded off our own thunderous survival/and we did the work of storms/we became a raucous sky/a tapestry of dark clouds/to slake the thirst of the fields/said something will grow here/if nothing else/it will be us
Julian Randall is a Living Black poet from Chicago. He is a 2016 Callaloo fellow, Lois Morrell Poetry Prize winner and the 2015 National College Slam (CUPSI) Best Poet. He currently works as a teaching artist with the Philly Youth Poetry Movement. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Winter Tangerine Review, The Killens Review, and Pluck! A Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. He is a candidate for his MFA in Poetry at Ole Miss.
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