"Gaps in My Memory" by Shell Myers

2 poems


Biracial Ghazal:  Why Everything Ends in Blood


And what language exists with no word for blood?
What gets across the legend as quickly as blood?

Where I am from there are no words for my shade
Only nicknames    approximations for the blood

Blacktino    Lanegro    Halfbreed   Mutt   Progress
dangerous   failed garden   bouquet of hunted blood

I am a burden in every mouth   my name is a minefield
people forget what I am exactly   but I end in blood

Two tone sacrament   Where the soil meets the sky
but never the horizon   child with the invisible blood

Like a sunrise I am considered most beautiful when
I am disappearing   stitching a gown of my blood

Child with too many tongues   gone twice over
aftermath  a failed experiment of the blood

People ask what are you  and I have no house
I bite my tongue into copper   search my blood

For a key   for a name that is not a translation for
Once there was a war  here is what we did with the blood


Freedom

The moon is a gaudy retreat
the night ebbs into more night
but none of that really matters

All I know is Beyoncé holds this note
that clings to me so long
it must think it is my mother
and now I’m everything’s son

My shadow looking all types of cocky
I cast a swaggering body onto the pavement
My Shadow stay looking
at the ground      like “Fight me”
Say I violent
               I violet
                       I stain
                            all the glass
I church of the bulletproof

Whatever you gotta holler
to make your peace with
how the light is sweeter
for passing through me

I can’t lose
when I’m like this
a song like a soft riot
boasting through me
my body rippling
in front of me
I make a good sky
I’m a small thing
as far as gods go

but look at my shadow
and say I didn’t put the moon to good use?

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Julian Randall is a Living Black poet from Chicago. He is a 2016 Callaloo fellow, Lois Morrell Poetry Prize winner and the 2015 National College Slam (CUPSI) Best Poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Public Pool, African Voices, Vinyl, and Puerto del Sol. He is a candidate for his MFA in Poetry at Ole Miss.

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Shell Myers was born in Elyria, Ohio, but now calls Philadelphia their home. They are a queer multimedia artist, voted most artistic in the 8th grade. They are passionate about emotional sensitivity, play, and subverting toxic masculinity. Shell is the Administrative Coordinator of Art & Art History at Drexel University. When they're not putting in that 9 to 5, they make time to create collages, paintings, photographs and drawings. You can find more of their work at www.shellmyers.com