Keep talking back. See if I don’t slap your taste into another Taco Tuesday.
They didn’t teach you how to braid in school? They won’t let you take that
backpack of Rap Snacks in the Omnimax. When you do learn to braid, it’s ‘gon
be in prison. Ooo she wrong, but she know it though. That’s why she running.
Heaven’s a second earth. Get up there and niggas still crying, food still costs,
lotion drums out in rings on your hand. But that’s the end. That’s prison. That’s
the orange earth of what I been accused of. If my call fails twice and I got a VIP
card, the first thing imma do is call up there and ask why my VIP card ain’t
working. Bitch, I know just enough to be dangerous. I know where your
mama stay so is that why you running? Several young Samuel Ls audition
for the role of ornery but I was born to play that shit. Back in Rikers
there’s a place called grab a plate, take a plea, pleat and strip a sheet.
On the flight to afterlife, they ‘gon sell airplane shots of hen and hurricane
relief. When I die I wanna speak to Kalief immediately.
Courtney Faye Taylor is the winner of the 92Y Discovery / Boston Review Poetry Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2020, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Adroit Journal, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Courtney is a graduate of the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program and is the Poetry Editor of SLICE Magazine. Find more on her website.
