When the Ghosts Come Ashore Read online

  to my body.

  My body is not

  sure if it accepts.

  or I am a river with

  a dam at its neck

  that has begun

  to drown its own fish.

  or I am a field setting itself on fire

  just to become the sun.

  or I am a newborn so obsessed

  with the birth,

  I throttle my own throat

  and hope for a repeat.

  or I am a ball of melted wax

  burying my own wick.

  or I am the flame

  melting my body

  down into a hard mess.

  or My eyes have learned not to believe themselves.

  or My eyes have learned the sky will be

  a red sea of winged teeth if you believe it to be so.

  or I am trapped behind eyes

  that recognize the demon in everything.

  or There is a demon in everything;

  I know this.

  or My brain is my own cracked windshield,

  my own bug-splattered glass mirror

  and I am driving towards the sunrise.

  or I am still driving

  towards the sunrise.

  SILK

  On this night, my body

  unwound like a spool.

  I was beneath a boy

  who loved thread for all the things

  he could make of it.

  Tonight, I am smooth and pliable

  like good silk before a snag.

  I am a metaphor for anything

  beautiful and ruin-able when it

  hooks on to sharp things.

  He lays his full weight

  on my torso and I am a leaf

  pressed still onto the mattress,

  pressed small and flat by something living

  for the purpose of study.

  I am not sad about this.

  It’s here that I can feel all my edges,

  visualize my outline best

  against a hungry white backdrop.

  I am not sad about this.

  I am dry despite the spit

  and I am dry despite the fire hydrant

  opening along the sidewalk of my spine,

  giving my dancing vertebrae reprieve

  in such repressive heat.

  Beneath the grunting face

  of the simplest kind of sex,

  when two people want things

  that are not each other, so settle

  for a drive-thru buffet of each other’s lips—

  It’s okay. I am dry and sort of shiny

  but dull on the other side

  like good silk.

  //

  I don’t really remember the snagging

  but at some point he stops

  and looks down at our axis

  to find blood.

  I gave him a fake name

  when we met, so I feel like

  maybe the red is someone else’s

  admission of guilt, a red slap

  on my ass that melted into shame,

  a kiss so hard and hungry

  it poured its color onto the sheets

  or maybe the fire hydrant’s water

  ran out of blue and started

  spraying out its own red self

  from my opening that pretended

  itself an altar, though it is not.

  There’s blood, he said

  and I am suddenly shooting with pain.

  I have been so careful with my dry,

  I forgot that water is needed here

  so my body offers blood.

  He finishes, and there are loose runs

  all over my pillowcase,

  a trail of pulled silk and ruin.

  IN WHICH THE GIRL BECOMES A YOUTUBE CLIP

  Whenever these things

  happen, my bones turn

  so white, it’s nearly

  blinding. All that

  white fire wrapped

  in all my black

  skin.

  &

  It’s just a dance

  because it’s just

  my body like it’s

  just a tree despite

  the rope but my

  graveyard looks

  so different from theirs.

  &

  I watch my professor

  stumble right over my

  own body cuz I’m so

  black and I’m so girl

  that it’s like I popped

  right onto the screen

  and stayed there.

  &

  I know it’s my whole

  body in that white boy’s

  mouth when he says

  It’s so interesting cuz

  when all the lights were off

  the video started playing

  the screen lit my face

  and all I felt were teeth.

  AFTER ST. LOUIS, GOD

  octavia butler reminded us that ‘god is change.’ st. louis is a city overflowing

  with god. — Adrienne Maree Brown

  St. Louis is a city

  overflowing with

  God. St. Louis is a

  city overflowing

  with hands. St.

  Louis is a fist of

  a city. God is an

  open hand

  overflowing. A

  hand is a small

  city. God is a

  city overflowing

  with fists.

  St. Louis is God

  with or without

  the open hands,

  with or without

  the fists.

  A city is a fist

  overflowing with

  God. God is St.

  Louis becoming.

  God is a city

  overflowing with

  St. Louis & St.

  Louis & St. Louis.

  Our hands are all

  overflowing with

  fists in the shape

  of St. Louis. St.

  Louis is a city of

  after-God. After

  God, each fist is

  its own city.

  Each city

  overflows with

  or without God.

  After God, St.

  Louis is a fistful

  of open hands.

  God is a city

  building fists to

  protect the hands.

  Every city is

  overflowing with

  fistfuls of St.

  Louis. Our hands

  are overflowing

  with Gods in the

  shape of a city.

  A city of fists is

  still open hands

  but is overflowing

  with after-God.

  God is a fist

  overflowing

  with St. Louis.

  The after-God

  overflows in all

  our fists. After

  St. Louis, every

  city is a fist

  overflowing.

  & after St. Louis, God.

  UNBUTTONED & UNBOTHERED: ON IMAGINING THAT FREEDOM PROBABLY FEELS LIKE GETTING THE ITIS

  Look at our bellies,

  peeling open in hunger,

  feeding on fliers & bullhorns

  & tweets about free

  dom like it’s a candlelight

  dinner, or a thick outdoor

  barbecue with butter &

  lawn chairs & scraped knees.

  Look at our anxious lips,

  the sore hinges of our jaws

  clamped around every piece of text,

  tonguing each quote in search

  of some greens & pig feet.

  How the growl in our gut

  carries itself across the country,

  desperate to feed on fre e

  ddd om like it’s full

  of black folks, swollen round

  with joy & a mouthful of ornaments.

&nb
sp; A table full of the kitchen’s blessings,

  whole bowls of free ee eee eeee

  steaming under our nose,

  drunk with centuries of starving,

  now finally feeding on f

  reeeeeeeeeeeee d

  om like it’s black folks’

  bellies stuffed with ENOUGH,

  whole bodies celebrating the itis,

  got our bones dressed in satisfied.

  Our ghost uncles & great-great

  grand aunts finally draped across

  everyone’s living room armchair,

  unbuttoned & unbothered,

  got an armful of finally fr fffr ffffreee

  filling America’s ravenous gut,

  putting all the bloodied fields / fists,

  all the dripping trees / heels & bridges,

  all of them, all those ghosts and

  all their glory, all that blood and

  all those bodies, finally to sleep.

  That’s some kind of free.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the journals where versions of these poems first appeared:

  Connotation Press: “Questions for the Woman I Was Last Night, 1” and “Questions for the Woman I Was Last Night, 3”

  Drunk in a Midnight Choir: “Sankofa”

  Muzzle Magazine: “Conjuring: A Lesson in Words and Ghosts” and “How America Loves Chicago’s Ghosts More Than the People Still Living in the City”

  The Offing: “Blood”

  Word Riot: “Quentin Tarantino or Why I Do Not Trust You with My History or On Wearing a Gaudy Robe While Grabbing the Ass of a Naked Black Woman for a Magazine”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jacqui Germain is a freelance writer, essayist, Callaloo Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominated poet living in St. Louis, Missouri. Her writing focuses on historical and contemporary iterations of black, brown and indigenous resistance, which she believes is deeply urgent work that both exists on the page and extends beyond it. Jacqui has represented Washington University in St. Louis on the national poetry stage on five separate occasions and was the 2014 Katherine Dunham Fellow with the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Word Riot, The Offing, and Muzzle Magazine, in addition to Sundress Publications’ 2015 Best of the Net Anthology.

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  Aziza Barnes, me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun.

  J. Scott Brownlee, Highway or Belief

  Sam Sax, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters

  Nate Marshall, Blood Percussion

  Mahogany L. Browne, smudge

  Neil Hilborn, Our Numbered Days

  Sierra DeMulder, We Slept Here

  Danez Smith, Black Movie

  Cameron Awkward-Rich, Transit