WHAT IS LEFT

 Afaa M. Weaver

In early morning after midnight, the time

of a golden essence, the new moon tilts

the edge of the horizon. I am full of nausea,

mac and cheese with bacon just before bed, 

to bed too late to keep the Circadian cycle.

The tilting jolts everything, the dogs snoring,

the cat on the bed pushing against our legs,

the in out of her paws like a baker kneading

dough for some butter biscuits. If I fall off

the edge of this bed too high above to let me

touch the floor, I will choose to be a clown

who carries a rock in his sock for the clowns

in the audience who see a black man’s strength

as some kind of joke, some thing to be taken

down and away, until we are left naked.

In our will, the blues of holding our children

when they cry for their milk as the moon tilts,

singing to them so their mothers can sleep, going

out in mornings, striding inside neighborhoods

full of sun, beauty and fear, knowing it all falls

the way seasons come and go. The one constant

is how the world has a chokehold on dreams

we dream in skin too dark for those who fear

the dark. We walk the streets, our inheritance, 

streets with sun and moon undermined 

by what robs the world and thinks black men

are the unwanted, what was not finished when

truth says we are the genius fear will not see.

Afaa M. Weaver’s most recent collection of poetry is Spirit Boxing. He is an alum of Brown University’s graduate writing program and the first elder of Cave Canem. In 2019 he received the Distinguished Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club, and Taiwan’s 96th National Medal in Art & Writing. At Simmons University he held the Alumnae Endowed Chair for twenty years. Afaa now teaches at Sarah Lawrence. See more at www.magichorses.org.