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.
There is peace
In me which
Is as deep as
The mind of God
When you are near….
Having neither rival nor equal.
She will desire peace at the
Cost of war
Being both prisoner and soldier
Believing if she fought harder
Bleed more
And denied her own
Thirst for more
Hunger for justice
and sight for more
Then she will be enough
When her body no longer
Blushes with your coming
Has peace with your going
And all love becomes an act.
The weapons of he warfare
Time, body energy
Have been taken as spoils
And she will do all allowed
To pull herself back together
Your touch no longer soothes.
The heat that was there has
Cooled…
With the turning of
Her head…the love is dead.
she will put self above love—
and nothing else will matter
JBHarris, 11.20.20
I want to spit
Remembering every time
I told you that I loved you—
every time
I kissed you
every time
I close my eyes
to remind myself
of what peace
and love look like.
in the middle of hurricane wind
and hellfire knowing that
the desire you had for me
was only contingent
on “how quiet I would be”…
reliance fiercely on what
you knew I would become
because I would become
anything…for you.
because I was you, was a part of you.
because I would’ve was a part of you
I could not be without you
and now that the hurricane is over,
and the winds have gone
and the sun has come.
I want to spit
every time
I think of how deeply
I loved you
—-and meant it
-JBH, 12.8.2020
What do I do
Now when what you
Left me with
Haunts me…
And with all resolve
As faith gives
I send it back to
You.
The love was mine—this is mine.
I give this back to you!
I will not leave you to rest!
When it calls to you
from the depths of
what you thought
was dead
to quicken you
with kisses warm
and love a deep
reminding you of just
what you held on
for the glimpses of
future hidden in
past if I were
To just give you
more time
“You know
I love you
You know
she cannot be
what you are to me…”
Wait for me
you are my heart
love of my life…
there’s a chance
wake me from
summer willing my heart
to start all over again
so the wedding
won’t be so hard
this time perhaps
-JBHarris, July 2021
Written after the attempted murder/lynching of 16 y/o Ralph Yarl by 84 y/o Andrew Lester in the KCMO area. He shot Ralph bc he knocked on his door to pick up his siblings on 4/16-17.
It was the wrong door.
Shaun King brought attention to this incident and he is now arrested.
Our own domestic terrorism
Being product of our
Own capture
When those who
Bought us–have no more use for us.
When “Black and” is
Weapon and warning
While the weapon of our
Most current warfare,
Is not of this world nor
The principalities therein.
We are sheep among wolves.
Rabbits outrunning foxes.
Finding our own funds
Making our own guns
To make sure no White Knight
Enters our Black Day
Because we really want to know–
Why is he free,
And I am not?
-JBHarris, 4.18.23
I Breathe Fire 