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
I Breathe Fire 