My Shift Begins at 7PM

(but the choir director insists i stay one more moment)

for Mr. Charlton



outlooking an empty church parking lot / smoke unbridled / wander ears through fuzzy / quiet into distant choir – HAIL MARYs practiced / echoed with a mystical non-committance / a GLORIA while the orange yolk / glow of 6:30 PM burns / away blue sky into black evening / they don’t clap or stomp / limb desires stillness until SUNDAY / energy staved until divine things strike / when pressed coffee beans and sugar cubes / and glowing morning dustmites and mint green gowns / and the quiet intoxication / of abnegated passions / creates a sublime totality on velvet red rows / high above where laypeople sit / enjoying in spiritual revue / holding something honest / high, higher still / full of light / and god’s life.

but for now / it’s a WEDNESDAY night / so i must submit / to this grueling shift / so i must surrender / to the chunky brick and / my backpocketed / rolled stupor of / smoke and subduction / becoming a doll for the / totality of a hungrier / more honest god.

“a chronicle of hunger”

commissary bratwursts browned nearly black, nearly smoking! daddy hurries
to the billowing smoker and forks one. your weekend favorite, i stand there, eating in a hurry.


late kindergarten nights: leftover crab bisque soup and a packet of two saltine crackers.
curls dip like finger food. i jolt awake. as not to insult daddy, i eat, hurriedly.


my daddy teaches me only how to make a pb&j. i am little. i am proud to finally cut
it how i like: diagonally. we cut it together, with a sharp knife. slow, jas, no need to hurry—


without him, i learned plenty, and cut myself often enough. my fingers spoke over the cutting
board do you not feel tender with me? but i am drowning them over sink water, hurrying


to the emergency room. my belly a mess of nerves and hunger, i only see ketchup sauce and
dried barbecue sauce on my hands. i am open, i am stinging, but, here, i am in no hurry.


they suture the wound and i am raw. i remember daddy cut his fingers too, clean off.
a young man in a kitchen alone, his flesh in a plastic bag til sewed back on in a hurry.


we may never stamp out our compulsion, me and my daddy, but i now whisper to myself,
as kind as he did, slow. no need to hurry. why must we even hurry.

“being called names, a kind-of sonnet”

monday, noon. we rarely chat, y'know (so flowering intimacies can

occur in thought only). she calls me names, forgetting mine.

her cadence shifts, reimagined a gracile, harsh-tongued mess of words:

back to her pre-medicated self, shifting tall before falling back.

small again, my version of her—skin purpling and ashy,

nearly sallow with it, eyes bloodshot from drugs/geriatric sleep

patterns/rushing arthritis + diabetes + dementia + etcetera, the fillips of demise.

she folds monochromatic clothes and calls me my mother's petname

until i flush. we rarely chat, as disorientation muffles conversation

into "whats" and "huhs" and the woman coffled beyond her

emerges and speaks to me (celestial and voicing your mouth,

i meet you before you became the you now: beaumont.

sweet tea. mistaking recently illuminated streetlights for the moon. hearing

crickets. my mother and you, a small child, feeling realized.)

Black as it is in color

past-gone and farm-viewed nights so dark blue eventually. pupils. tree bark sometimes. car tires and their skid marks. voids. pre-genesis, pre-void oxymoronically. depths of oceans. the tops of trees. burnt roaches. burnt toast eventually. my man and his designated waitress at waffle house. centers of sunflowers. bee and zebra stripes. eastern gray squirrels so dark gray eventually. the eyes of deer and their hooves. enough blood. not quite my mother's hair; that's 1B actually.

Black as it is in nature

no streetlamps: animals appear bone-bleached white against car lights and trees a pale gray, swampwater a mirror, spanish moss the heads of bodies, the road an asphalt abyss of black starless holes. how many infinities are there? the armadillos moving rocks and the moon escaping amongst the tears of god in the sky. the haunt and exhilaration of night follows us until the pink dawn.

Black as it is in existentialism

being once a forest, mixing roots, shucked into wood, rudely now furniture, petrified into stillness. stuck between death and living usage. becoming malleable and unchangeable. marked. shielded. vengeance is always sevenfold. human and sweet. the toilers and waymakers, my mothers, my god.

Black as it is in superstition

as kids, we watched frogs suicide-hop to their startling drowning deaths. summers we spent releasing frogs and holding the white pink underbelly against our pink white palms. sleek dark frogs laying against expanses: bucket bottoms, sandboxes, the barren ground under swings. and, surprisingly, white concrete, floating on their backs as we did in our floaties. until caught up in the netting of the poolman, into the trash bin coffin and us, our daddy, his arms. so we'd sigh—"these frogs"—and manhandled them free, make a wish for luck like grandma taught us, and let them go.

Black as it is spiritually

saving the third rinse of rice water in my fridge for guests, practices of gratitude. 14k gold for the babies and other money rituals. grandmas in sunday best, the brides of god. choirs and praising, kids singing psalms and winter plays. food in the basement and long-winded blessings preluded by "this wouldn't be long so the food don't get cold," a proven curse. babies crying in the back, powdery perfume and purse candy. cigars, brandy, button down suits and brown oxfords; saying "miss", blowing smoke, soldiers of the lord. blessing and being blessed.

“the altar mirror”

and
bring
the
grandma
again
eats
swallows
gone
persistent
repeats
hunger
ends
elongates
and
widens
she
sings