1. Negress

Maybe it’s easier to name a racist in post-structural space.

Baraka manifested metaphors rather than bodies in copula

And Michel mimicked narratives of power

In salons where stick figures watched from chandeliers.

That’s what happens to marginal systems and rugged landscapes

Where all matter begins or ends with a poor prognosis

Like Christmas lights beginning to flicker

or nylon stockings ripped by a cat’s claws.

Skin isn’t polychromatic just because we want our love to last

But your father reminded you what a negress is for

And you said, Don’t take it so seriously before telling me—

We can’t have a baby though Elliot is a good name for a boy

and I always wanted a daughter named Merida.

Prescribing psychoanalysis Freud said women are no substitute for men

when trauma and sex converge

And the Ego is sublimated by interior monologue

Otherwise I would stand in the…