A Low End Revival

1.

Her real name is Susie Knuckles.


2.

She calls her poems darts.


if you’re wondering what they sound like
you’ve probably already been hit by one.


3.

while you were out jawnin
like the jawn you are,
she was sipping 40s
under a sliver of yellow moon
singing hymns to
the spirit of Saint Osiris
from a Staten Island rooftop

while you were getting dolled up for the party,
she was designing a major in Ruckus Bringing.

get educated.


4.

Let’s be honest,
no one ever really like Masta Killa or Cappadonna anyway.


5.

If you do her wrong,
she’ll lay your nuts on a dresser,
and bang that shit with a spiked bat like BAOW!!!


6.

She’s a Muslim,

and no, she may not be a Five Percenter,
but she has to count the
amount of jawns she’s bagged
on both hands and feet

how’s that for divine mathematics?


7.

she doesn’t have your name
tattooed across her knuckles,

you have her knuckles
tattooed across your forehead.


8.

she will make two holy pilgrimages
in her life time.

Makkah and Shaolin,
twin cities staring the world holy
like eyes on a tender grimace,
a sacrament of tea leaves and vinyl dust


9.

when Safia talks in her sleep
she speaks only in dialogue samples
from old kung fu movies

she is a gentle riot
a sudden splice of tiger style
a single brass knuckle
gifted as a wedding ring


10.

Her idea of dressing up for parents
is combed hair and a clean white tee.

bong bong.

11.

she can make a paper crane
in sixty seconds flat

finds each a fleeting home:
a dinner table
a denim pocket
or tied to a rear view mirror
with a scrap of red yarn

gives each as a gift
a paper promise
a form of flight
we might build with our fingers

12.

when your car is broken into
in the middle of the night,
window smashed
to decorate the block
you’ve only just learned to know as home,
you will survey the crime scene
and find nothing missing.

between cracked albums
scattered papers
and cities of crumbling glass,
you will search the wreckage
for any sign of loss
and find nothing but a promise

a tiny paper crane
hanging from the mirror
untouched