Poetess Anoints Herself

In wild audacity I wedded Word,
obscured ragged frock made fit

for my existence. I claimed
branch broken weavings

as my incendiary hair.
Hovered over crumbling coast

while my silken breath
swung bare-breasted.

The sea was nothing but spit
in the mouth of God.

As we entangled,
waves grew crimson,

painted shore with
a cruel history. The Caribbean,

a vase bludgeoned
into shards.

Blood calls forth
from howling sea, trembling ground.

Don’t you know
fingers decay to black dust

pointing up? A flash
in a deserted sky.

Prayers of the forgotten
are incandescent

arrows launched
from my molten tongue.

Uses of Negritude

Bodies knit stitch sticky,
conceptualize a people.

Foster teeth’s slow-pulverize.
Blistering calls, too much like howls

—too generous for an impervious
hand’s mechanical distortions.

Please, re-educate beat-brow pedagogics.
The revolt is syntactic.

We must rinse wash repeat.
Circuitous incompletions

are our anatomics of revolution.

Shyanne Figueroa Bennett
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