after Hanif Abdurraqib
& oh, my niggas, by the time we had, had the world lost
its luster. you see, either our fathers had never come back
with the bread or they came home with extra dirt on their shoes
& our mothers—our poor mothers—either only had one good
nerve left, or two new babies to add to her brood of soft prayers
that a familiar pair of cratered, wooly thighs would soothe
her babbling worries, & isn’t it enough to know only that much?
do i really have to tell you what was playing the night almost
all of us watched our fathers disappear into a bottle, or a second
job, or the next family, or the dirt? in the dry valley heat
of our relentless youths, we all saw the last radiant beam
of light strike our porches & wake the bluejays in triumph,
before ever knowing what a last chance was, & some of us, only
some of us, had the good sense to call out to the warmth & beg
it to return to us in our sleep—when it was ready to sing the joy
back into our bones—humming the rhythms of our grandmothers’
deepest laughs.
Khalypso is a Sacramento-based actor and poet. They are fat, black, neurodivergent, queer, and an agender badass. Their work can be found in Cosmonauts Avenue, Rigorous Journal, , and Shade Journal, as well as a few others. Their chapbook manuscript, THE HOTTENTOT LIGHTS THE GAS HERSELF, was a runner up for the 2018 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. They are the 2019 Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate and you can find them on Twitter at KhalypsoThePoet.
