Fig. 1.2 Black Skin Diagram (After Claudia Rankine)

tattoo treaties are the inks signed to my skin. fingers poised; pulping morning bursts to pores, burning from the driest of shafts. research-based; loamy soil bears warrior genes thwacking a hydrant’s nose-bone. shared lose; bleeding, irrigating across my lid’s boulevard. a quick Dolce fashion tryout- as quick as patting a plastic face into a Police car’s mirror & its backseat; delinquently air-wicked. free of charge. i lost my bearings yesterday. i’d knocked doors to doors, my phalanges are peeling dry paints. i keep searching. a negro that once lost his son to the milky creek had his inflated body returned overnight. gerundial nonsense- perching by its bench today, a little boy chases after a balloon when he could’ve just waited for it to return. frostnip stiffness- not trying to grab a miracle by force, the wind paralyzes my fingers, my blood’s not so warm. My prayers quiver for nothing, “& something’s supposed to rise from the sea. Isn’t it?” I wait a little longer as burnt believers would as if for a Black Friday; to get low-budget rosary & reel Sisyphus-like rocks with ease. a twelfth cassette- existential scene retake of the black kid hoping on white geese for long, clean fingernails. hwit– is the woman privileged to crate the sun in her shades. her baby combat cake’s epidermis in its stroller & the remains grain its black apron. no stain to report for being nothing but a child. patience whisk into the eventide. & water does not resurrect- not twice in a week. had i known, i would’ve layered an icy faith over my animal skin and baggy jeans; a bare chest is no good branding. i have always had this sketchy illness of overhearing espionage walls chewing fat scandals into another’s ears, “Henry…is him?” “…it?” “…this?” “…thing?”

-that I’ll look up to the sky of salt pinches on a burnt sacrifice & implore the Lord to save them from how they stare at a foreigner.