poem for my niggas

By McKenzie Chinn

i wanna see you smiling more my nigga

where nigga equals prophet

heralded by seraphim and trumpet

and i don’t mean smile

how random men will tell me to smile

i don’t mean smile

the grotesque masks we’ve worn

for police and paparazzi, for mortgage lenders

i mean smile

like the first time you ever did

when your mama sang you that song

older than maybe earth itself

held you brown skin to brown skin

and you knew through her hum

who you were

don’t you know i know you my nigga

i see you in the brown

of the lines on my own palm

you future and fortune my nigga

good like soil, right less like rain

and more like thunder

i shudder to think of the you in me

the you in all this empire, assembled

brick by brick on your back for free

don’t you know i know you

sense you in a room before i see you

you like the sea, you ocean

you crash, tumult, riptide, and rightly salt

bear hurricanes ashore

to wreck what you were made to build

don’t you know i see you my nigga

the uniforms you don and eyes you lower

the only crime you’ve committed is to thrive

in these eyes you are no fetish

no exception and need no explanation

your hood-ass name a song on my tongue

brown iris and black pupil

the place where the sky and water meet, black pupil

black hole that’d crush us all but for your grace

how i hear you my nigga

like i hear a ways away a train to Jordan

how i see you like i see

the house i mean when i say

i’m going home

you home, my nigga

where nigga equals titan

troubled water, and if you listen:

the drum that’s calling

Copyright © 2017 by McKenzie Chinn. Used with permission of the author.