25

don’t tell nobody      she’s dancing on beer cans
and shingles and bones     don’t tell a soul
have we gone crazy? are we even whole?
she’s been dead    so long    closed in silence
sky laid on her like a million men    go on in 
wind    let her be born    she hasn’t seen stars
only branded a whore.

* today, my mouth is a tomb     of the things
white people forget. Beneath the sky   a garden blue 
stalks my name     I forget    this kind of fire strikes 
black bodies into shit    Oh friends    wild 
until we are      free                 set us afire       again.

Saloni Dixon

pondering a black girl’s* suicide