EVERY NIGHT IS A TRIBUTE.
BY EDWARD MORETA JR.
Finalist for the 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry
i hurl at the thought of losing
my life during the night.
where no one can see
but you can always
see them blues
on some bullshit.
i always think
i hear blue
when i listen
to black people talk
about their aspirations
or when i listen
to my cousin laugh
in the backseat or when
niggas
is just niggas.
in the moments you are least
a nigga
them blues
become the most blue.
i never see red though.
i just be it.
some days the world changes
like a beat switch. the sky is
cotton and then it becomes
those that pick them.
it is a lose-lose
situation with
the color
of cotton.
i feel like the night
right before it becomes
night, the blue
slowly peeling light
back into black. life is built
around ironies like that,
like white people
who wear durags
and black people
who talk about love,
love beating blue black.
love beating black blue.
i hate
blue then.
cuz blue has been pitted
against black even though
there is so much
blue in black.
but the blue in black
has been caused by
the men riding in blue
and the men living in no color
and the men burning in white
and the men profiting in the black
and the men that have taught us to believe
that our blue is not blue at all
but words, words that got no color
and words no one even understands.
i understand life
as a conception of niggatry.
niggas are here
to make life
beautiful. but so much of that is
by making our blue
something different
so others can see it better.
that’s why i’m in love
with the night
that has overtaken
blue everywhere
and made it
something else entirely,
love beating blue back
love beating black in.
it unravels unapologetically like i unravel
when my head is in between her hands
or how the corner unravels
to cradle the brothers
or how holy water unravels
to embrace foreheads.
and so when i think about dusk blue
i can only think about the fact that
when a rainbow unravels all of its colors
it ain’t even have me.
