Sonia Sanchez

1.Your limbs buriedin northern muscle carrytheir own heartbeat2.Mississippi…alert withconjugated pain3.young Chicagostutterer whistlingmore than flesh4.your poreswild stars embracingsouthern eyes5.footprints bloomingin the night rememberyour blood6.in this southernclassroom summer settlesinto winter7.i hear yourpulse swallowingneglected light8.your limbsfly off the groundlittle birds…9.we taste theblood ritual ofsouthern hands10.blue midnitebreaths sailing onsmiling tongues11.say no wordstime is collapsingin the woods12.a mother’s eyesremembering a…

rushing the daythinking i heard your voicewhile it was only the nitemoving overmaking room for the dawn.

into your throat. Couldnot fly forward.Your mouth facestartled by this autumnThunder went south again.I had forgotten the saluteof death, how it waits Militarilyon the outskirts of our skin.I had forgotten how deathhowls inside our veins.O father, how much like a childagain I felt as I ran down doctorspainted on porcelain corridors.O My father, as I…

negro dreamsi hear voices knocking at the doori see walls dripping screams upand down the hallswon’t someone openthe door for me? won’t someone schedule my sleepand don’t ask no questions?noise.like when he took me to hishome away from home placeand i died the long sought afterdeath he’d planned for me.Yeah, bessie he put in the…

where madmen goosestep in tune to Guernica.we are people made of firewe walk with ceremonial breathswe have condemned talking mouths.we run without legswe see without eyesloud laughter breaks over our heads.give me courage so I can spreadit over my face and mouth.we are secret riverswith shaking hips and crestscome awake in our thunderso that our…

smelling the evening from under the sunwhere waterless bones movetoward their rivers in incense.a piece of light crawls up and downthen turns a corner.as when drunken air molts in beds,tumbling over blankets that cover sweatnudging into sheets continuing dreams;so i have settled in wheelbarrowsgrotesque with wounds,small and insistent as sleigh bells.am i a voice delighting…

this melancholy woman forgottenbefore memory camethis yellow movement bursting forth likecoltrane’s melodies all mouthbuttocks moving like palm tress,this honeycoatedalabamianwomanraining rhythm to blue/black/smilesthis yellow woman carrying beneath her breastspleasures without tonguesthis woman whose body wavesdesert patterns,this woman wet with wandering,reviving the beauty of forests and windsis telling you secretsgather up your odors and listenas she sings…

you. i am singingone long necklace of love mymouth a sapphire of grapes.

move on even higher.those wholaugh at yo/colorhave not movedto the blackness we be aboutcuz as Curtis Mayfield be sayenwe people be darker than blueand quite a fewof us be yellowall soul/shades ofblackness.yeah. high/yellow/black/girlwalk yo/black/songcuz some of usbe hearen yo/sweet/music.

i bled an owl’s bloodshredding the grass until irocked in a choir of worms.obscene with hands, i wooed the worldwith thumbswhile yo-yos hummed.was it an unborn lacquer i peeled?the woods, tall as waves, sang in mixedtongues that loosened the scalpand my bones wrapped in white dustreturned to echo in my thighs.i hear a pulse wandering…