Call to prayer: for my body under the rule of white supremacy
Go ahead and cry
Go ahead and *tweet*
Ignore
Delete
Devour everything you can
fit onto your tongue
Go ahead lie
Uncover or seekcover
Go ahead and hold your breath
walking in brown skin
past a murder
of men
a flock
a congress
on the North Lawn
in the subway
outside mosque
at first light
just around
the bend Go ahead
Breatheunderwater
Lay down your words
D e s e g r e (gate) your heart
Pick up Lucille Clifton
Recall the language you live in
Part your six winged seraphim
Call her to sing
on your knees
on your back
on your feet
Go
where the love is
The Greatest
The Bolts
It is the job of the firstborn to understand
what is given can be taken.
Before I told you, mother
that I how I
loved that woman,
tu casa was mi casa:
your garage stored boxes
overflowing with old possessions.
Now
you bristle when I use
the possessive on the phone.
I’ll stop by
your house, maybe
after four, please don’t forget
the bolts. Yes, I understand
your instinct to clench, mother, the
tightness in your chest: that
[heartbreak]
won’t dissipate
with time.
I’m sorry
it’s come to this
but, without exception
love’s invisible
apostrophe
cleaves.
S & M & You: A Love Poem
for M.P.
Since you’ve returned
I’ve hung decapitated
inside our meat locker: strung silent
upside-down pig,
cold metal hook through the anus
cleanly gutted, the blood fresh
but not dripping,
red circles around white
where my wrists and ankles—
suggest contact
you walk into the freezer
leave your signature in bone
like a fingerprint on a canvas
still wet
as you approach with your cleaver
I pine for your technique.
Despite the damage, your blade
remains sharp.
Loose skin and fat
lay in piles at your feet
like roses, uneven stanzas or enjambments. Even now,
I belong to you and you to me.
Notes from la Casita
for Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Terrance Hayes
…and they were too busy singing
couldn’t hear their own beauty
as they were tuning it
I was ringing ‘cause
they were tuning me
still singing and they were wearing
sweatshirts, fur boots
and the girl had flowers on her dress
but couldn’t see them blowing in the wind
as she was singing, her eyes closed
and Amiri Baraka sitting on my right
drinking (what smells like) beer?
and when did the Alaskans start dancing
and throat singing like blacks
from the joints. Now Baraka is laughing
(still drinking) and the flowers are blowing above
her knees. I could be in Tuva or wherever
but I’m front row
of New York
Lincoln Center
still floating in the Terrence Hayes of Blue Baraka
(and he got up to leave as quietly as he came)
and I clapped without knowing it and my mind
changed (without knowing it) and it’s been six years
since I gave my life away without knowing it
and the tune changed. Before I knew it Baraka
was back again (I felt Black Again) the music
hymning through our bodies, God’s
instruments, brought me back to where
I had stopped writing and begun
to revise.
Omotara James resides in New York City, where she is an MFA candidate at LIU Brooklyn. She is the recipient of Slice magazine’s 2016 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets, as well as the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, Visceral Brooklyn and Civil Coping Mechanisms’ anthology: A Shadow Map. She has received scholarships from Cave Canem, the Homeschool, and the Garrison Institute. Currently, she edits Visceral Brooklyn and Art of Dharma.