screw off your mouth and sit there bottle still. know what it like to feel fragile. full of air, but no voice. whole body a lung, no choice but breathe. wait for sludge or liquid or sand to fill you. do not budge unless toppled. almost shattered—the ground fast forwarding toward you. the wobble upright. uprooted toward lips. threatened in sips toward half-empty. empty: echo in the throat. choke from the drunken grip round your narrowing neck. the passing of hands. the fingerprints that dance along the rough song blown through you. the spit sliding inside. consider how cracking could free you. how break and shatter become you. how the glinting shards could draw blood—
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T'AI FREEDOM FORD is a New York City high school English teacher, Cave Canem Fellow and 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, No, Dear, The African American Review, PLUCK!, Vinyl and others. T’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn, New York.
Poet Douglas Kearney and composer/producer/drummer Val Jeanty link up for a a compelling LP that feels like the written word come to life. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2021