For the Sonorous

after Krysten Hill

​

My country

is a kind of cage

that follows you like a stalker

they want you, piercing flashlights

blinds your eyes, tapes mouths shut

then they tell you to sing

I can’t stand the noise

An agonizing clatter

a desperate clamoring

They tell you they want encores

their requests are killing me, killing us

They think they know us

but they don't even want us in their homes

they think they are our lovers, but they have

raped us across the lands, seas and centuries

I seek quieter times

away from their crowds

their arrogant smoke, their dull energy

makes me squirm

makes me yearn for their erasure

from our history

​

​

​

Otherness

​

after Alex Dimitrov

We're on the moon. Floating.  Together then away.

Years ago, I saved you from hate.  You became my lover.

Despite our union, I tried to save more people. But it's easier to say

it than to do it.  The moon is stoic. It doesn’t approve of my lover.  

Without your love, I am just a shadow in a room.  The moon

senses your deception. Hate is a fox trying to trick a rabbit. Do you love me?

I must tell my lover that I've failed at loving his paper bag ways. Plain and empty.

You wanted a deep passion from me, but I could not give that kind of love. I know

my lover is disappointed. The moon won’t abide by my tears. Hate is the vacuum of space.     

Hate is suffocating. I am breathless.  I reach for the lifeline that is you. There is no hand

reaching back. My lover confuses me.

​

Finances keep hounding us like bounty hunters with dogs. Our money is not infinite like the

oceans. But even oceans lose their currency. Money runs dry. Banks fail.  Our money is better off

under a mattress.  Besides, we don't sleep in the same bed anymore. We haven't in years.  I don't

miss the warmth of your body. It went cold when my heart did.

​

We must refuse evil.  We must not abandon our hearts. We must end the hate, the debased,

racists, religious terrorists and the elite. They exist because we allowed them to.  They exist

without love.  Their love is warped.  But we aren't pure either. We are coal disguised as

diamonds.

​

I wish this otherness would end.  But there seems to be no ending. Our love struggles onward,

life support, breathing tube, ineffective medicines. Oceans are dying. The rich continue to get

richer. The poor labor with only love to sustain them. What will sustain us? Something beyond

this otherness.

​

​

​

Our Essence is Not a Social Construct

Rebellion is a raised fist

that fights the air around it

like the sun battles the night sky.

Belonging is a team that I’m not on.

I have self-selected my persona

on this solo journey through Social Media.

I am my own avatar.

A portrait of the familiar turned unfamiliar

across a digital divide growing wider by

the nanosecond.  There is no warmth

from a war-weary sun covered by

evening bruises, there are no other options

but to declare my denied privilege

to be who I choose despite

a status that is followed by only a few hundred

people.  I don’t complain. Not a status seeker.

Digital fame is fleeting. Insta-success is temporary

like a sandcastle as the tide rolls in. I’m posting a

new update – I accept me even if society has

rejected me.

Shirley Jones-Luke is an African-American poet and writer. Ms. Luke lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.  She has an MFA from Emerson College. Ms. Luke was a 2016 Watering Hole Poetry Fellow.  Her work was published by Adelaide, BlazeVOX, Deluge, Fire Poetry and Skinny Poetry Journal.