Two Poems
THERE ARE SEVEN CACTUS SPINES INSIDE MY PALMS, AND SO I MUST BE HOLY
The man I loved wants to kill me—
is this holiness? It’s almost Christmas, and I’m shopping for a handgun.
When God impregnated Mary, he first sent an angel.
The angel Gabriel—like a glock, almost. Announcing
the coming of Christ for at least one man.
Only here, there are no starry fields. No flocks. No shephards.
All of the people in the park with purposeless herding dogs—
every one of them missing a perfect planetary alignment.
What a wiseman on the street corner points to and calls, “the light show.”
The planet Venus, and all that.
Every dog is only some dominion to lord over.
Little darling promised lands, little ruined gardens. How stupidly
they read the ground. How stupidly I pray, too.
To the angel Gabriel, maybe. The time is right.
He comes in a dream. Like the man I loved—armed.
5-O RADIO
It starts harmlessly:
an abandoned backpack a white male eventually comes back for.
No mention of the bomb squad. No panic.
They speak in numbers and static. I worry they can hear us.
You play too much, pretend radio back: Over. Out.
If the US is a terror or surveillance state,
you're on the side of surveillance. And I, terror.
Unmanned drone strikes and Dad calling about my documents again.
Disappeared Black activists and The Wall. White people everywhere.
Their trust in police chokes like an algae.
On the scanner: police chase an intoxicated driver through our neighborhood.
Intoxicated. As in, needle, bottle or both. I bring up that bumper sticker
I see on pickups with confederate-flags and dangling testicles:
SAVE AN ADDICT SHOOT A DEALER
An invitation to a lynching and more static.
I feed the dogs salt and pepper potato chips, watch them crunch crunch
and beg for more, always trusting more will come.
Let me live for a while in this dog-faith.
Let me trust the hand reaching towards me.
When I run out of potato chips, the dogs lick my hands.
Is it that white people live a life without salt? Would that they would bloat
and float away across the ocean. Let them be the raft, one time.
Suddenly, Black Male. Black male in a red white and blue coat with fur trim.
We are struck. No. Stuck. These are the facts:
A Black man tries to sell a bus pass at the bus depot downtown.
A white person feels uncomfortable. The cops are called. We hold our breath.
After dark, we let off shots for Antwon Rose. It isn't any kind of answer,
but it feels good to lean into rage.
Unlike the courts, we will put a name to this.
Our nose hairs sting, hands blacked by powder. But we are steady.
It's about breath, shooting.
All I know to pray for is strength: let me be powerful.
My hubris: with this gun, I am ready for the race war.
Let La Migra try me.
A bullet is only a seed unburied. And I was born to till this earth.
Green thumb and trigger finger.
I will not be so polite about the borders I draw.
I will take back every avocado, peel the mango from white hands
the only way I know—with my teeth.
Imagine, only knowing unripe fruit.
I will not be bruised by plodding thumbs.
In Brazil, if you bite into a seed expect the thorns.
I have a blade and whetstone for every tongue.
Kim Sousa
Kim Sousa is a Brazilian-American poet and open border radical. In 2019, she organized Pittsburgh’s all-Latinx chapter of Christopher Soto, et al.’s “Writers for Migrant Justice” nation-wide protest collective benefiting Immigrant Families Together and co-edited the benefit anthology of immigrant and first-generation poetry, No Tender Fences, which donated 100% of its proceeds to RAICES Texas. Kim’s work can be found in Poet Lore, Rogue Agent, Apogee, Blunderbuss and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her first full-length manuscript and at home again in Austin, Texas with her two senior pugs and her familiar, a black cat.
Twitter: @_kimdow