Our eyes have met in an unexpected way.
He had caught my attention,
and I started to behold.
Things became a bit puzzling;
but I kept myself descrying.
As I perceived for so many days,
weeks, months...
something in me unfold.
Things were revealed;
then it showed complicated scenes.
As I closed my eyes,
he showed up in my dream.
My heart beat for him;
it felt good and seemed true.
A tiny part of me loved him in a land of
fantasy.
Then I woke up-
I am back in the reality,
where my feeling for him is like forbidden.
Now I couldn't wait for another night,
to love him in my dreams.

*-Steph Dionisio, May 28, 2015

saying you don't want to fall in love because you can't risk getting hurt is like saying you won't build houses because earthquakes exist

Your eyes locked with mine,
Shifting back and forth between each,
Trying to read me like a book,
But your concentration was breached.

As you slowly inched closer,
Like a wolf stalking its prey,
I went against my natural instinct
And decided I needed to stay.

You grabbed my arm and pulled me in,
Close enough to hear the cadence of your heart.
I felt my own and realized our drums
Were playing the same exact parts.

In that moment you kissed me,
Slow at first as if to feel every cell of mine.
As you gradually intensified your suggestive touch,
Our bodies began to intertwine.

Your moan reminded me of a growl,
And I was ready to see your teeth.
My skin yearn for more
Of what you were hiding underneath.

Your hands, soft to the touch, seemed to change,
As if they transformed into paws.
All I felt was the digging,
The digging of your protruding claws.

Because I was ready…
I was ready for the irresistible pain.
Because any feeling I get when I’m with you
Is a feeling I want to remain.

I.
My face resembles your face
less and less each day. When I was young
no one mistook whose child I was.
Features build coloring
alone among my creamy fine-***** sisters
marked me Byron's daughter.

No sun set when you died, but a door
opened onto my mother. After you left
she grieved her crumpled world aloft
an iron fist sweated with business symbols
a printed blotter dwell in the house of Lord's
your hollow voice changing down a hospital corridor
     yea, though I walk through the valley
     of the shadow of death
     I will fear no evil.

II.
I rummage through the deaths you lived
swaying on a bridge of question.
At seven     in Barbados
dropped into your unknown father's life
your courage vault from his tailor's table
back to the sea.
Did the Grenada treeferns sing
your 15th summer as you jumped ship
to seek your mother
finding her     too late
surrounded with new sons?

Who did you bury to become the enforcer of the law
the handsome legend
before whose raised arm even trees wept
a man of deep and wordless passion
who wanted sons and got five girls?
You left the first two scratching in a treefern's shade
the youngest is a renegade poet
searching for your answer in my blood.

My mother's Grenville tales
spin through early summer evenings.
But you refused to speak of home
of stepping proud Black and penniless
into this land where only white men
ruled by money. How you labored
in the docks of the Hotel Astor
your bright wife a chambermaid upstairs
welded love and survival to ambition
as the land of promise withered
crashed the hotel closed
and you peddle dawn-bought apples
from a push-cart on Broadway.

Does an image of return
wealthy and triumphant
warm your chilblained fingers
as you count coins in the Manhattan snow
or is it only Linda
who dreams of home?

When my mother's first-born cries for milk
in the brutal city winter
do the faces of your other daughters dim
like the image of the treeferned yard
where a dark girl first cooked for you
and her ash heap still smells of curry?

III.
Did the secret of my sisters steal your tongue
like I stole money from your midnight pockets
stubborn and quaking
as you threaten to shoot me if I am the one?
The naked lightbulbs in our kitchen ceiling
glint off your service revolver
as you load     whispering.

Did two little dark girls in Grenada
dart like flying fish
between your averted eyes
and my pajamaless body
our last adolescent summer?
Eavesdropped orations
to your shaving mirror
our most intense conversations
were you practicing how to tell me
of my twin sisters     abandoned
as you had been abandoned
by another Black woman seeking
her fortune     Grenada     Barbados
Panama     Grenada.
New York City.

IV.
You bought old books at auctions
for my unlanguaged world
gave me your idols Marcus Garvey Citizen Kane
and morsels from your dinner plate
when I was seven.
I owe you my Dahomeyan jaw
the free high school for gifted girls
no one else thought I should attend
and the darkness that we share.
Our deepest bonds remain
the mirror and the gun.

V.
An elderly Black judge
known for his way with women
visits this island where I live
shakes my hand, smiling.
"I knew your father," he says
"quite a man!" Smiles again.
I flinch at his raised eyebrow.
A long-gone woman's voice
lashes out at me in parting
"You will never be satisfied
until you have the whole world
in your bed!"

Now I am older than you were when you died
overwork and silence exploding your brain.
You are gradually receding from my face.
Who were you outside the 23rd Psalm?
Knowing so little
how did I become so much
like you?

Your hunger for rectitude
blossoms into rage
the hot tears of mourning
never shed for you before
your twisted measurements
the agony of denial
the power of unshared secrets.