Table of Contents
Notes & acknowledgments 1
I
What had happened 11
Gxrl gospel i 13
Portrait of rage with caution tape & bullhorns 15
War strategies for every hood 17
I, too, sing america 19
No name in the street 20
Gxrl gospel ii 22
Grxl gospel iii 25
Transhistorical for the x in my gxrls 26
& not by sight 32
II
The creek behind my childhood home was one of those small heavens 35
& what is a heaven without a god to break it 36
Some of the men we love are terrorists 37
Father-son & holy 38
Unholy ghazal 40
Yes, i am done with the god of white men 41
Grxl gospel iv 43
Transhistorical and i observe the Sabbath like a ill verse 45
Independent 47
Listen, 48
A poem of failures 50
Held like arsenic in each of my kin's mouths 52
CPT or lessons in god-timing 56
III
Gumbo ya ya 61
IV
Pantoum for aiyana 75
Georgia me 77
Like a freedom too strange to be conquered 79
Thottin on fountain drive 81
The world between me is gender 84
Transhistorical for the men we love 85
Filé 87
Egungun 89
Wayward experiments 90
This poem is a hex, tread light 92
Psalm in which i demand a new name for my kin 95
In the event i become some unrecognizable beast 97
More notes 101
Acknowledgments 105