OVERTURE FOR...
We went . coming
for façade
caused fish-hook in flesh
got jaw caught up on muscle
got new language
called it affirmation
spoke it too soon
got it called “propaganda”
or some other stigmatic
to drape out the
though our names go on
out of these little compartments: masc
before fem / top
before bottom
hashtag: strict
hashtag: power—
How it was done
is how we found ourselves,
sloppy
left hanging
[left]
center, never
justified never proportioned,
always
skewed
always
lip gaped
and
skewered
all us scared qua
scarred victim
as if victim means one
is already dead
in a mouth
when conjuring up
a future body—
In “We”
“I” wakes up like this/
stirred
by hollow voice
heard it say, “Here
take my mouth,
it will sing for us
when we have gotten
where we’re trying to go”
BALLAD FOR...
We’d been eating agave,
long night
sucked back limes
‘til were wilted
and worn sodden, we watched
them bury sand
with their bodies,
scrape shoulder blades
towards cliff
edging each other on
deeper further
yet some remain
a long wait,
just haven’t gotten off—
Where we was
is some forgotten logarithm
of hands
showering over,
beading off
each other’s foreheads
as if some indigenous androgyny,
as if
we had no need to be man
enough—
Was wild how we traveled
narrow terrain trying to find it all
really, though
acting like we wanted nothing,
hell naw,
none of that yet,
O’ how a knee finds a knee
while doing everything
we shouldn’t, while sitting
closer than we should,
while talking shit,
playing the game drenching our stomachs
with bumpy face anything
to ease the mind tuning
to Bone
or Wu
everything we’ve been taught
not to say falling apart
before the ruggish pit between us
the hair on our legs
bridging, a rub in-
cognito a smile
shown to the side
we go on
in the feeling, I think
“If he don’t move his,
I’m damn sure not moving mine…”—
We were bent
corners in a Buick,
colored nickel
wuz no sound
wuz no static
on the radio,
I had gotten lit
“…. fire water….”
“ … my throat…”
and did not remember
how my hand got on his thigh,
his thigh now stretched
beyond
and we
started rapping
about
dashboard his
were rapping over [tha] dashboard
we
were by the air—
Perhaps,
dance was the way
fingertips needle
the eye of a crooked leg
becoming the spark
behind a tongue,
craving
its reciprocal, never mind
who it was, who
said what, who did it first.
We, us both in our wanting,
became the idea of dream
of misremembering
how we got there—
We drunk back
sweat having just
drummed a bridge
out my hands
into his lower,
when the then-self
had slipped,
got cradled softly
and backslid
against tongue—
JONAH MIXON-WEBSTER is a poet, sound artist, and educator from Flint, MI. He is a Ph.D. candidate in English Studies at Illinois State University where he is currently writing the dissertation "Stereo(TYPE): A Paracolonial Approach to Black Poetry in the 21st Century." His poetry and hybrid writing are featured in Spoon River Poetry Review, Small Po[r]tions, Blueshift Journal, Assaracus, Callaloo, LA Review of Books' Voluble, Love Letters to Spooks, and the anthology Zombie Variations Symposium.