For Colored Kids Building Up Their Bones

A sign of summer the red strawberries on both of your knees

white salt lingering on the upper lip.

Old mattress under third-story windows, jumping spirit first,

one at a time, like wingless black doves.

On police record it says: the moonlight shot your cousin dead,

shot your brother dead, but the gun gets away—

it hitches a ride in a car with sirens. The texture of this city slick

as the grease you massa

You add water to the jar of ketchup, pray that the night will not

be laced with splatters of red, strawberries and burning flesh.

You learned as children, between the sidewalk and the curb,

to double-dutch quickly dodging cutting ropes, making your feet

tap till they lost their breath. Just keep jumping with splinters in your shins.

Push them till they break, baby.

Black butterfly you are molting, you keep falling into yourself,

build a skeleton of elephant tusk and forgotten sidewalks—

rib cage first. I see you kneeling at the foot of your bed, you’re losing yourself

like sand through fingers, a desert forms at your base.

You are not the hands that sell the venom that makes things shake,

that is your brother. The electric bill is overdue. Night is cold.

Bones are tired. The job is heavy. Push them till they break, baby.

Baby girl’s a blackbird, baby boy’s her shadow

together you are a missing psalm—the one the Bible

wrote out for being too sexy. The one that makes the city lights twerk

to a beat that is off-key.

This is a song for colored kids, who dance slow and deliberate

in the belly of the city, where the lights block out the stars.

I know the map is missing, the Little Dipper is empty, the North Star

has grown old and blind, but push them till they break, baby.

Our spirits, contained dirty walls and paychecks, slowly sink

to the arches of our feet and wait as black apparitions, to be born again.

You have no time to fall, wipe your face before you leave.

The lie is looped, tied, and double-noosed knotted—

push them till they shatter, baby, push them till they break.