After “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin

a goddamn bull
a piece of black
pumping the belly
pickaninny-full

love on a dying bed
the best blackest
black breasts leaping
against cattle prod
smacking against
the chest
a fat lip splits
a scream is like
a moan is like a minstrel

scalp sweats
hair coils
is kinky

a broken buck
a heavy private
meat on the scale
is its own body

do you love a nigger
do you love like a nigger
do you be loved like a nigger

to possess a big thing

hanging

low

 

 

 

 

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SPENCER S. is a queer black writer with strong southern roots studying poetry in Chicago. Their poems have been published in Allium, A Journal of Poetry and Prose and Mystic Owl Mag. They have also worked as an Assistant Editor for Allium.

 

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is “Enigma in the Night” by JONATHAN KENT ADAMS.