Warm evenings -

a slight breeze with the scent of smoked ham

and cornbread for dinner.

BROWN BODIES come out when the streetlights do

FOR FEAR OF BEING SEEN,

dancing and singing to Motown.

Turning bodies into wine

too sweet to taste.

Hearing John Coltrane and his saxophone

telling stories of BLUES on SUNDAYS

with a bass line as steady as our heartbeats.

We gather here,

in this moment,

in this place.

A place not welcomed to us by outsiders,

but a place our tears have made a home out of.

Bodies laced in slick sweat, and HIP-HOP, and POETRY.

Bodies golden in sunlight and bursts of mahogany under dimly lit moons.

We’ve made our HOMES here.

Here, in TRAGEDY, SOLEMN and SORROW,

we pack up into HYMNS to sing like lullabies.

HERE we do not forget to be strong,

to go unbroken like our mothers did after crossing oceans

and bending their backs to save us.

WE DO NOT FORGET

to make peace,

not unlike the raging water we come from.

Somewhere along the way

we traded knapsacks for semi-automatics

and a dream for cheap liquor at the corner store.

A number of us have been forgotten here,

but we don’t think about that.

Not today and maybe not ever.

This is just another story to US.

Another melody, another cautionary tale

to make a song out of.

This is how we survive.

How we make light out of darkness.

Our place.

Home.