before hope packed it’s suitcase         & fled for the hills                   taking her words along with
it            before hospice             Grandma could weave a story            from dust        a meal from
prayer                  she was all powerful   she proved it when she turned
her diagnosis into a rabbit

between operations                 while her legs could still carry her     she paced bubblegum colored
floors              decorating the wards with anthemic   song through a toothless smile 

we gonna kill da rabbit           we gonna kill da rabbit
            da rabbit is da cansuh            so we gonna kill ’em dead
never looking weak                even as her breath became                  a draft in a cathedral

a few months               saw the thinning of grandma              her salt & pepper curls
yet she sang                             her pacing, crackled fanfare               calming the near-dead nearby 

eventually her bed became her home             still      she painted the walls of her room with song
until a forever-hush     yanked the brush                     from her throat when the rabbit
            outran the hunter in her blood

Raphael Jenkins prefers to go by Ralph, as he feels it suits him better and he’s heard every Ninja Turtle joke ever uttered. He, like Issa Rae, is rooting for everybody Black. He is a three time 2021 Best of the Net nominee whose work has been featured on his mama’s fridge, his close friends’ inboxes, 3 Elements Review, as a 2021 Frontier Poetry Open finalist, Flypaper Lit, Rust + Moth, Alien Literary Magazine and elsewhere.