Status Updates From Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

“we earned this paradise / by a death we didn’t deserve.”

i touched the stove & the house burned down

in our blood
men hold each other
like they'll never let go
& then they let go

- a love story -
he came/over
& then he left
but he stayed

a note on the phone app that tells me how far i am from other men’s mouths
headless horsehung horsemen gallop to my gate dressed in pictures stolen off Google


everyone on the app says they hate the app but no one stops


he whispers his name into my lower mouth

i sing a song about being alone

because of its cast or its audience. this movie can't be metaphor for
black people & extinction. This movie can't be abour race.
this movie can't be about black pain or cause black pain.
this movie can't be about a long history of having a long bistory with hurt
this movie can't be abour race. nobody can say nigga in this movie

who can't say it so my face in public. no chicken jokes in this msovie

your master magic trick, America. now he’s breathing, now he don’t. abra-cadaver.

¡ loved a boy once & once he made me a red dirge, skin casket, no burial.


all over his Tims. he needed me so much he had to end me.


i was his secret until i wasn't alive until not. outside our closet

i found a garden. he would love it here. he could love me here.

¡ loved a boy once & once he made me a red dirge, skin casket, no burial.