Amber Atiya, born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn, is the author of the chapbook the fierce bums of doo-wop (Argos Books, 2014). Her work has appeared in Atlas Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Bone Bouquet, Boston Review, Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, and elsewhere. She is a member of a women’s writing group that will be celebrating 13 years this spring.---------
bonding
high school potty mouth
at south jamaica library
wanna feel my fro.
i bow to her hand
as head librarian
dial 911 cause “her ass
just won’t shut up, won’t
leave the premises.”
in 3 minutes i learn
she love sponge bob
& bible study, do sex
work after school.
the good lord make mint
tea & mango butter soap
for run home along
a cemetery
so last ride of the night
don’t see where you sleep.
i was 16 once, weave
glue like wet tar
cool on my scalp.
i tell her so.
new york i belong
to the coochie-cutter
mayhem
of hell’s kitchen
to your night-scandalous
posse of drug mules
& spooks
i am not afraid to be fed
to the pyre
to lick the sweet
of death’s cane
to flicker lights
in my lover’s house
to disrupt the clairvoyant’s
ventriloquy—
allow me a space
real sexy
between graveyard
& bodega
to sip my wines
to unlearn this anthem
of breathing
let my name
become nonsense
to my ears
the arabic
of my own
stonehenge