This is a poem for nobody’s eyes
About my students
my flowering black and brown baby girls
more bud than human, saying all singsong how
black is ugly ugly ugly
holding their arms up to
one another, comparing hues
About the instant I realized
I loved women too
and sagged hard against my bedroom door while
dread and hope danced a strange dance
in the pit of my gut
About the college kids I see in class everyday
popping Aspirin and Xanax and the pill
with their headphones and angry publicness and
******* ******* **** this
and notebooks and pens and
soft privateness and
I love you I need you I need you
About the boy I couldn’t speak to for years
without feeling sick or small or unrequited
About Audre, Toni, and Maya teaching me
how to start revolutions with a word
About how I dream again and again
of kissing the girl I am in love with
and sometimes
we are the in the dark and sometimes
we are laughing and sometimes
I am moving breathless
into the room saying
I have never loved you more than I do at this moment
and lips are on lips are on lips
About how I can’t look at this one
pink nightgown because I was wearing it
when my father said he was cheating and
too many tears fell on those
tiny satin cherries
About Holden Caufield and that
******* merry-go-round
About a crazy, unquiet and
utterly illuminated self
Me, spoken yet unspoken