Trending »
Related »

TWO POEMS – Mia Willis

on January 10 | in Poetry | by | with No Comments

THE DUKE OF YORK @ 5 PM.

for mickalene thomas
 
men talk about the weather like they were born for it.
             or it was born for them.
                        whichever.
 
a bar feels like an unsavory place to write until
             i hear two men talking about the weather like a femme noire they unlearned how to love.                          “i hope she stays this beautiful.”
                         “i hope we get lucky.”
 
and suddenly, i must write nature an apology.
             make it sound like “ain’t no mountain high enough,”
                        like “give me the night.”
 
i apologize the way only a fellow femme noire can.
             first.
             often.
             for the men and their climate change conversations.
             aware that forgiveness is buried somewhere in the atlantic
                            and archaeologists are coming for that too.
             familiar with all we will have to surrender before they let us rest.
 


 
PARABLE OF THE HIDDEN TREASURE

an aubade for those who are always rising
 
on the days my sister’s memory is an atrophied muscle
a sax player resurrects the “darkest light” sample / husks “show me what you got”
becomes the pot howling hymns at the kettle on the Q to church avenue.
 
                                              family honey-roasts niggas over woolen plats in a black girl’s kitchen
                                            stove hot / tongues sorrel sour / kanekalon viands to emaciated hearts
                                metta passes through dap meditation and none of us are tender-headed here.
 
on the days my sister’s empathy hangs thick / crab boil steam clouds ashlee’s windows
asia laughs under trees in a prospect park sunshower / superb and inevitable
fire envelops the tip of a blunt rolled with lavender the grandest                                      
branching only complemented by heat.
 
                                                                           we two-step across the floor in maya’s living room
                                                transformed and overripe melody / a trap motet with massed strings
                                                                                                                   movement 1: i forgive her
                                                                                             for singing to me in voices not her own.
 
                                      thank her for the music anyway.
 
on the days my sister’s rings are trophies from a living made by hunting  
commerce at an end / the green line sinking into the ocean
movement 2: i forgive myself
for marking the change in her tale’s narrator.
 
                                  thank her for lingering to listen anyway.
 
 
Mia S. Willis is a Black performance poet from Charlotte, North Carolina. Their work has been featured by or is forthcoming in The New Southern Fugitives, FreezeRay, Narrative Northeast, Peculiar, Slamfind, and others. Mia’s poem “hecatomb.” won the 2018 Foothill Editors’ Prize, earning nominations for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets. In 2019, Mia was named the first two-time Capturing Fire Slam Champion, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, the Young Artist Fellow at Chashama’s ChaNorth residency, a collaborator in Forward Together’s Transgender Day of Resilience Art Project, and a performing artist on RADAR Productions’ Sister Spit 2020 Tour. Their debut poetry collection, monster house., was the 2018 winner of the Cave Canem Foundation’s Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and is available with Jai-Alai Books. Connect with Mia on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram (@poetinthehat).


Pin It

Related Posts

« »

Recent Posts

News

THE SACRED GROVE –  [...]

[new_royalslider id="17"] Ana Flores is a sculptor and ecologist. Her work is informed by how pla

Safia Elhilo

2 Poems

Michele Robinson\'s Art [...]

Let Me Straddle Your Mind

X.J. Kennedy

The Crusader

Why did you leave bring m [...]

Yeah bring our electric shaver back, I bought it we shaved each others back it was important to me

Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes

BEFORE YOU – Kwame  [...]

1 Yes, we were country, lived in shotgun shacks, where the road loses its way to dirt and live

MENSTRUAL FLOWERS – [...]

[new_royalslider id="11"] Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery  

WHAT THE WOMB ISN’T [...]

         "Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to lea

JUNOT DIAZ

Junot' Diaz and Edison, NJ

EDISON, NEW JERSEY – [...]

The first time we try to deliver the Gold Crown the lights are on in the house but no on

Rachel Eliza Griffiths [...]

Elegy & Poem

The March on Washington:  [...]

OTHER WORLD: A Conversati [...]

"We are all the other."

I OPEN A BOX

…and find inside a picture, of myself as a child, sitting on a small chair, wearing overalls an

Naive Paintings

Raphael Perez

CIRCLES OF THE MOON & [...]

To Alex, on turning two Some say the Ring of Brogar is the Circle of the Moon. There is n

In This Issue

March on Washington An Interview with Cheryl Evans

5 POINTZ: GRAFFITI MECCA  [...]

In a strange twist of what seemed like reverse vandalism, the Graffiti Mecca was painted over.

In This Issue

Forest Gander A Translation

In This Issue

Quassan Castro, poem Grandson to Grandmother

URBAN CANVAS: Wynwood Wal [...]

Wynwood Walls, of Miami has been called "a Museum of the Streets."

Pulaski Skyway

Low like the mean dream of Newark the sky must have seemed to its builders. Rickety now, unhingin

THE SPAN & OTHER POE [...]

At last, the extremes of his present methods seemed to offer the happiest avenues. The strengthe

Paul Latorre

5th Limb Poems

Joan Larkin

Poem, Knot

Gina Loring, Def Poetry [...]

Poem, Look This Way

In This Issue

Xue Du, Poem

AT THE END OF THE DREAM I [...]

A woman      in a black kimono      dyed black hair disappeared      behind a black curtai

Marge Piercy

Poem: Behind the War On Women

Naive Paintings

Raphael Perez

Marie Miazziotti -Gillam [...]

Maria Mizzotti-Gillan

Vicky Dantel

Short Story

In This Issue

Pilar Fraile Amador poem

Quassan Castro

Poem

Lugensky Durosier [...]

Lady Haiti

In This Issue

David Trinidad

In This Issue

Landzy Theodore

In This Issue

Angelo Nikolopoulos

Scroll to top