For Hoodrats Who Choose Necromancy When Time Ain't Enough

a sweet spoil of war, pouring the liquor
to parched earth & quenching death. I rip open
the body bag, without my heart

getting caught in the zipper & I face my father. I open more
body bags & face my friends I write them all: w/ flesh & w/o

bullets. I snatch the worms w/ my jagged teeth
& feed them to my enemies when they call me a chicken-head, I laugh
ghosts in their direction.

I cry the river-styx & dare non-believers to cross
me. I raise my hand & tell them talk to the grave, BOO
I don’t have to look for a fight to look like one;

I remember this & stay
armed, stay legged, stay
one fist in front of the other, stay
fist first. I learned to conjure
my block back.

I am an ancient thing, a screeching artifact, a banshee & all the laments
like gunshots, I know

too many triggers that did not come with warnings, so I try
& be an omen, & ain’t I a sign? If you cut me, is there not caution
tape? If you tackle me, do I not become a ticking

tombstone (that’s right BOO) haint nothing to it. I’m spirit
unrelenting. I tell em I’m haunted. Don’t start no séance,
won’t be no séance;

the blacker the manifestation, the redder
the juice. & you know hoodrats got all the juice. I know
they called us spooks back in the day. A group of spooks is called
a cemetery. I come from

a long line of graveyards: they drowned my kin
& fed their cries to the sea in my stomach,
as bait. I manage to decipher the deadest of tongues. What am I if not
the apparition’s daughter?

Whenever I open my mouth – somewhere in America a Ouija board tells
the system, it can go straight to the hell it planned for me & when it arrives
Hallelujah, I can still talk

mad shit. I can drink ice water. I tell myself – Bitch remember, you can

levitate.

It’s in your bones.