“I’m far away from the middle of Bumblefuck”

and still taste the charcoal scabs of our knees

injured from collapsing in watermelon & hidden-collard-green-fields.

we are couzins. our scars have the same origins.

I recall us running away from untamed

horses who shared the same food with muddy hogs

whose meat we shared the delight of pig feet and cracklins

but never chitlins. cause we always spit

it out just like when Uncle Bunny offered

his beer to us when we were just five years old.

I savor it all

somewhere deep inside of me

our foreign tongue of twisted roads,

grandma’s flooded zanks with peeling wood,

the crumbling floor of her rusted trailer

where our pallets laid us to sleep

when our parent’s old rooms were too stuffed

with fallen portraits of family reunions

and swarmed with the stale scent of mothballs.

here disrupts my manners, my home-trained hospitality

in its brash coldness; its windy slushy snow has shriveled

my afro. short daylights, polluted stars & rowdy nights

have me wishing for the serene sunsets, okra air, and mosquito bites.

but I offer no smilies in our memories

Cuz, you will not recognize my proper

city tongue. Cuz, my bucked tooth smile

has been bracketed together and yours

is still in da country.

if we were to sleep in Liberty again

I will offer you an unripe plum from our decomposing tree of childhood...