Ribbons
It starts as a dream,
a dream
with sharp blades
stabbing
the inside of my head
till I part the gauzy curtains of sleep
and realize the
blades are actually
voices outside my third
floor window,
beyond the fire escape,
shouting “nigger.”
Voices bathed
in Africa and rinsed in Dixie.
“My nigger…”
“Nigger, puh-leeze…”
“Dat nigger don’t know jack…”
“Fuck dat nigger…”
“Fuck you nigger…”
“Nigger”
“Nigger”
“Nigger.”
The word is a hatchet,
an heirloom
dug out of the
antique ruin of slavery,
and it cuts the night into ribbons
that will adorn a black girl’s hair
or cauterize a gangta’s knife wound.
They abandon the ribbons
in heaps on the street,
but they take the hatchet with them.

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