The first time your heart
Will break in front
of your daughter
It will be to your silence
And eyes that betray
Neither age
Nor suffering.
You will smile.
You will talk to her.
You will keep watching your movie.
You will remember.
You will swallow his name
To put it back into
Your heart,
Hoping it for not
To rise again.
-JBHarris, 6.2023
Written after my ex-husband’s wife threatened to call the police on my daughter for screaming at her brother, making a bad joke, and her stepmother of a decade became Carolyn Bryant.
To the White woman
who tried to call
the police on my child—
The prophets tell us
that there is
nothing new under the sun,
and because there is
nothing new under
the sun,
It is of great
and grave expectation
that Black woman
are never dumb.
But you
like me
who hold life
on the inside of you,
yet you pull death
from your mouth,
aiming at a child
who is defenseless
in this world,
whose only
recourse is to
Call the only name
she knows other
than God—
Mama.
And her roar be but
whisper to you
and hurricane wind
to me
and I will sprout up
as wings as eagles
as Isaiah spoke
about to see
where the tears
have come from.
hiding her behind me
I stand in front of her
and death daily —
You do not scare me.
I push death back
into your mouth
that you may breed
and birth it as you
and all your kin
have known to
do for centuries.
you will not devour mine.
She knows who she is
to whom she belongs
and she knows
that she is part
Of Maya’s 10,000.
Plus 1.
She has my blood in her
Divine Father on the inside
of her
and how dare you
try and stifle life
in her that has
already begun!
Because when Black women cry,
even in girlhood,
they summons
the 10,000 who will
protect her
arm her
show her the faces
of enemy from a long way off.
These ancestors which
she will take with
her always,
and as the prophet said,
there is nothing
new under the sun
In life and death
is in the power
of the tongue in
those who choose
we eat the fruit of it.
Your fruit is chosen—
curse is already on your line.
Me and mine?
We gon be just fine.
-JBHarris, 5.25.2023
It is of the rolling of
Water in muddy rivers
That give the rebel
To the Belles along
Mississippi banks–
Give roar to what
Should have been
Whisper.
Gave power in havoc
Passion in chaos
And Anna became
Tina to tell us
How to get over
And the end of
One life is the
Gift of another.
The ancestral is God’s memory after all.
that is memory
Is gifted as
Music.
-JBHarris, 5.24.2023
Written after the passing of Tina Turner at age 83. STL KIDS CHANGE THE WORLD.
Note: The line “No Black boys die on Mother’s Day” is taken from the poem of the same name from the book A PECULIAR PEOPLE by Steven Willis.
On the Internet,
there’s always
a thread going
that wishes mothers
happy Mother’s Day.
the one day
of the year
that the women
who are charged with
running the world are
supposed to put their feet up–
and yet the feet are up
and at’em
making sure kids
faces are washed
Breakfast is made
and coffee may be
sipped cold–
if at all.
on Mother’s Day,
we celebrate the
mothers of queer children
Disgarded and forgotten
By family of their births
the mothers who
are aunties by blood,
mothers who do
the job of mothering
when no one else would
whether it be in classrooms,
boardrooms, or in laundromats.
mother is both
noun and verb–
and because it is both-
–a thing and an action–
it is constantly needed
I know there was a poet
that one time that said
“no Black boys die on Mother’s Day”
because life is present
wherever a mother may be
Or lay their heads.
Happy Mother’s Day
to the women who
decided to mother,
even when they did
not know how
happy Mother’s Day
to the women who
stand in the gap,
and fill the gap,
and know how
to slap
away all things
by which attack the
children that are
in their charge.
Because trust and believe
no village is complete without a mother…
It is the women of your blood
that have gotten you this far.
It is the women of
your understanding
and of your ancestral forgetting
who have gotten you
to a place
by which you,too,
can step into the realm
known as mother.
Whether your womanhood be new
Forming, learned or Ancient,
because we know the ancient of days is also an us…
Happy Mother’s Day
is the whisper of breezes
through open windows
on summer nights
is why we fight
it is how we rage
against the dying
of the light…
go on mother we see you.
-JBHarris, 5.14.23
This year was introspective for me.
I was forced to think about things I was scared to, while making room for myself. I think the presumption is poets will have this never-empty, never-ending reservoir to soothe or settle those that read our thoughts.
I’m always humbled for it by anyone who reads my work or is inspired by it. Sometimes the wells we pull from for others, are dug by our own hands–watered by own tears!
Yet, we write.
We create.
We serve. Make no mistake: a poet is a servant. Perhaps this is why Baldwin said it is a horrible tragedy when a nation ceases to produce poets.
The poet remembers what everyone else forgets—and gives light when all is lost. On this, perhaps, hangs humanity.
This piece will be in the work VENGEANCE IS THE BODY (June 2023).
Where do you want it?”
He said watching
The portion of my sepia skin
Unveiled in the mirror
Freed from the cotton prison
Of shirt
“Here.”
I whisper
Heat inside of fingers
That trace above the
Collarbone that Lauryn Hill
said kisses go above.
Smile matching his own
As sepia skin tingles under
Gloved hands the color
Of kings eyeing
The final resting place
Of him who loved me
Saw me
And could find me
Wherever I was.
It is fitting
Blood and ink mingle
To make this love immortal.
There should be no negative space
The lettering should be done
So it is seen by whom
It needs to be seen by
Memorialized what we are
And shall always be
Young, gifted and Black.
The buzz and shock of
Skin gripped tight under
His hands
As skin breaks to
Receive desire—
Overriding pain
That causes my eyes
To close
Pulsing under his hand
Body easily drinking in
Pain and pleasure
Making all things
New and his
His words etched
Deeper as the
Ink and blood
I just want to hear you say it baby.
Fuck yeah you mine.
So say it.
In the middle of the ocean
Of sepia skin
cherries pop in between
Letters that I will
Take with me everywhere
Pieces of him and me,
Me and him
Taking memory and body
To back where memory began.
Sound.
Look.
Feel.
Tears.
Then the pain stops.
“How you feel?”
He wipes wetness away
Admiring the work
Of his hands
And his hands on me
Giving me back
What only memory
Can preserve.
Time and love converge
With ink into
Sealed to the
this clay vessel
Who houses fire
within her.
Let the fire remain.
And let a piece
Of that fire
be his name.
-JBHarris, 3.2023
He tells me “Hey, Queen!”
as I walk across the street,
bag in hand
Big sunglasses on
melanin Poppin
he looks at me
as if I’m supposed to
acknowledge him
that he noticed
the divinity right
in front of him!
The regal form
dressed in the color
of honey mahogany
in a pair of bad heels —
they make me feel
as if I indeed can
conquer every space.
he looks at me—
and I look at him.
then he says,
“well fuck you then bitch!”
Pause.
I turn.
I look at him,
Feeling my eyeballs become heat rays
as a beam into his chest,
wishing the sizzling
would come from it
some kind of wound
that would open up
and let me see exactly
why he would call me–
something eternal and celestial,
as a monarch–
and then call me a female dog,
when I do not respond
I focus eye heat right
on his chest and
then hearing all
the women of my blood
buzz–
Images of all queens
killers, sharecropers and
Students, them being
Magical and malicious
running through time
taking me with them.
You ain’t gotta respond, but never forget who you are.
I open my mouth
which houses lions
red lips shapely and deadly
The Immortal-Invincible
Answering with assassin speed
Shots never missing.
I am a queen from
parking lot to penthouse.
I am a queen from Barbershop
to bedroom
to board room.
I am a wholeass queen and wholeass problem.
Then, I go to my car,
and slam my door.
breathe deep-
heavy exhaling
so that my crown
can sit on top
of my head
where it always
needs to be.
I don’t leave my throne for peasants.
-JBHarris, 2.2021
This piece will be in the future work, Motherblood.
“I wear heels to let trouble hear me coming.”
My mama said.
Good thing we wear the same size.
-JBHarris, September 2022
Until change is complete,
Black women will continue
To be born.
-JBHarris, November 2022
There is peace
In me which
Is as deep as
The mind of God
When you are near….
Having neither rival nor equal.
I Breathe Fire 