In These Black Hands Read online

  My people are stories.

  Full of missing pieces and

  laughs that dance.

  Sometimes I read through

  them and cry. I have

  to catch myself before

  my tears damage the

  pages.

  The pages feel like all

  that I have sometimes.

  I won’t give up remembering

  I won’t give up.

  My people.

  Myles III/Still Black

  Half of me swims beneath

  your chest.

  I hear my words enclosed in

  your breath.

  I am a moment

  fleeting,

  monumental, soul-grasping,

  and sustaining.

  You are the light that

  streams through me.

  What is the night without

  the moon?

  Still black, still endless, still

  moving.

  But it is without its pair,

  its illuminating

  love.

  Pull

  Steam raising from sun soaked

  skin. What does it mean

  to embody the moon and

  mimic the sun?

  Carrying yellows and golds

  inside of you as you

  chase after the night.

  Following dusky stillness,

  on fire with dawn’s love.

  You stay warm, you stay

  lighting us all with

  your memories.

  We try to ignore the

  pull. Taking us from

  the now. Releasing us

  in the past and leaving

  us there to roam.

  I am, we are still there

  even as we work, play,

  live. Trapped in you,

  wet and warm with

  remembers.

  Brown boy

  I am sorry you could not

  stay. I wish the

  world was ours and

  that we could walk

  together.

  I will never stop dreaming

  of your smile, your

  open eyes and your

  sunshine future.

  Your life was brief but

  you are a lifetime. You

  are the best part of

  me, of my life. You

  brown boy that I love,

  I cannot ever be

  without you. I am

  you. We are one

  and the same.

  The same yellow

  sunrise. Bright and

  fleeting.

  Night Surrounds Us

  Long evenings that

  linger like scents

  of rose.

  Waiting. So many

  minutes piled into

  waiting. The moon

  plays hide and seek

  with the sun and

  we run.

  From memories, faces

  sleepless nights and

  fear.

  Fear that mutes movement

  and steals sound.

  Long evenings that

  sample songs of mourning.

  A deep blue that settles

  into the blackest black.

  Night surrounds us and

  we tuck away our smiles.

  We On

  This world was never ready for the

  swell of you.

  So let them wonder.

  Let their pondering buzz around you like

  the thirsty honey bees.

  Move against their music, side-stepping

  questions that never seem to

  end. Just

  wait.

  We on the way.

  Follow the crystal moonlight when you lose

  your footing.

  Do not fear the loss, the win, the

  draw. Remember the feeling of resting

  on cold concrete, the lines left in your legs,

  the tear streaks you wore proudly for decades.

  Hold on.

  We on the way.

  Create, blast, breathe beautiful into

  the cold forsaken places.

  Do not be afraid to cast

  shadows, spells, memories that suffocate.

  Fold my hands into yours and listen for the looming sunrise and

  remember.

  We on our way.

  An Answered Prayer

  I prayed for you. I loved

  you into life.

  There were nights before you

  when I kneaded my belly

  making room for all of you.

  Big smile.

  A laugh that rocks a room.

  The music of you.

  I saw you coming.

  In the corners of my dreams.

  In my most vivid visions.

  I was a witness. I am.

  Then and now.

  Even now. I watch you flit

  and groove into spaces too small

  for you.

  And collapse whole worlds.

  I sit, hands in my lap.

  Sight not what it once was.

  But I can see all of you.

  Every single step.

  Instead We Roam

  The sunsets sing songs

  of longing.

  As the light fades we

  let the insides out.

  Our less flattering, painful

  selves come creeping and

  we turn to face the

  moon.

  We cannot hope to swim

  among the stars tonight.

  They close the doors in

  our faces and prepare

  their judgement.

  Instead we roam and

  play in the red dust.

  We listen as the music

  rises and swells.

  Taking us with it.

  Taking us away and

  never promising a return.

  We listen as the day dies.

  Black Lovings

  The kinds that seep deep

  into

  you like, like the night

  air when the sun retreats.

  The kinds that sing softly over

  you while you travel through timeless

  dreams.

  The kinds that grip you by sunkissed

  shoulders and shake awake

  the universe that resides inside.

  The kinds that not even death could stop.

  It is the kind that wanders in and out of

  spirits’ worlds in search of redemption.

  It is a mother in one cold place,

  a warm son in another. A golden

  line that keeps them tethered to each other.

  The Black Lovings are concrete

  ridges in the soles of our feet.

  No longer for sale, we have always been

  Free.

  Black Lovings is baby’s breath, Jamaican

  rum, spitting laughter through fire

  tears.

  Black Lovings is

  an untamable ocean,

  murderous, and fierce.

  Sunflower Monday

  This, our yellow day, will be

  centuries long. Petals

  spread at your oak feet,

  feel your hands sink into

  the earth.

  A beginning, a beginning, a

  beginning.

  Delicate, growing perfectly impermanent.

  I walked the city streets in

  ninety degree DC heat to meet you

  and your love.

  Found you tucked under

  couch cushions and geometric

  rugs.

  Thank you for sour saturday

  nights and crowded sundays.

  Thank you most of all for our

  Sunflower Monday.

  How dare we laugh?

  How dare we laugh in this

  world they say is not ours to seek?

  How dar
e we sit up, black

  backs tall and strong against

  our seats?

  How dare we light flames in

  small places? Blazing the confinement

  offered. How dare we

  Be.

  Breathe.

  See.

  How dare we call ourselves, set

  ourselves, make ourselves

  Free.

  Together

  Weathered and warm

  I rest in your cobalt shadow, there

  is love here and, there is

  home here.

  Moonshine kisses on collar bone,

  mixing melanin with mist.

  You hold my

  broken body

  in your dry coral palms.

  Put me together again.

  Chipped here and there. No

  worse for wear.

  4 Hours in a Missouri Street

  for Michael Brown

  In the summertime,

  in the summertime

  our skin shines, glows like target

  practice.

  In the summertime,

  in the summertime

  our smiles sing, against ebony

  skin, hard to swallow. Straight

  gin.

  In the summertime,

  in the summertime our laughs

  bounce off walls like tennis

  balls. Unhidden.

  In the summertime we glisten,

  too bright for simple eyes.

  In the summertime we do not die.

  In the summertime we fly, rise.

  Untitled

  I have written you one million

  songs. Lullabies and ballads

  alike.

  They all sound like the

  breaths you will never

  take. They all make

  me moan from deep

  within.

  The moan of a childless mother

  left clawing at her skin.

  The pain is always moments

  away, inches.

  I refuse to pack it up

  in boxes with the rest of you.

  Instead I

  let it rise as

  it pleases. Lean towards the

  hurricane, tip my hat

  to typhoon.

  Grasp it around the waist.

  Embrace.

  The pain is memory, it is confirmation that

  you were here.

  We were here. Together.

  The fear, the love,

  the way my body shook. I am

  still shaking now.

  You taught me to stop

  performing. The show stopped

  the day that you arrived.

  No more time to pretend,

  no more space to hide.

  No more someone else’s vibrato or

  strangers’ pirouettes.

  I am lyricist, choreographer,

  and director

  now.

  I run spotlight and sing

  the big solo too.

  The songs I wrote for you

  are tattooed on the insides of my forearms.

  They are there for

  safekeeping. Here they

  sit.

  Alongside everything I

  never told you.

  In my arms where I

  will not get to hold you.

  I will sing them until the

  world knows them word

  for word.

  Sing with me now.

  Her Body, a Museum

  She is a woman in repair.

  Body aches and nightmares

  skip, through her.

  Each day,

  a reminder of

  what is not, what was, what

  will not be.

  Shoelaces bind her together as

  she learns to walk again.

  Learns to breathe again.

  Learns to

  be

  again.

  She is with the sun as it peeks behind

  the doughy clouds.

  Why is this place, this clear

  and cloudy place the only

  one she calls home?

  Why does the red dirt under

  fingernails, offer comfort? Her hair

  dry, unlike sharp coal

  eyes, unlike slippery

  palms that leave gray sky stains.

  Her mind, a bundle of impatient

  fireworks.

  Each one waiting its turn

  to blow.

  Her body, a museum.

  Here, beauty has a home.

  About the Author

  Salisa Lynne Grant was born in Providence, Rhode Island and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. Her first love is and always will be poetry. Her second love is her son Myles who lives within her heart and within her art. For more from Salisa readers can find her work in the poetry anthology Scattered Petals: poetry for remembering faith, hope, patience and courage and the forthcoming poetry anthology A Garden for Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living. Readers can also find content from Salisa on her Youtube Channel: “Foreseeing Salisa” and her Instagram: @foreseeingsalisa. Salisa is completing her PhD in African American Literature at Howard University and works as an English professor. She currently resides in the Washington DC area.