“grief for the horizontal world”
BY COURTNEY FAYE TAYLOR
Everything that I’ve ever done
I keep in a jar marked innocent
so that men can’t touch it.
Most flies tire of gossip
they’ve prayed to be on the wall of.
They roll such funky eyes, yawning
over grownfolks’ most beautiful
business. I sit with hands tied in a lie
behind my own ass, a patient
afro donkey. I am the only trick alive
and with eyes who likes outgrown
acrylics and who likes it when
wind blows a water fountain’s show
onto a sidewalk in a park the size
of Portugal. I think, hard confetti. Yesterday
I am twenty-six and the house
you will rape me in has not been
built yet. Catching my fat reflection
in an hourglass, I don’t seem capable
of creating what I have: a boy with proportions
the size of disaster. Portugal and disaster
are the exact same size for me. My son
is a park and inside of him a water
fountain blows its show onto
styrofoam boardwalks. The house
he will find me odd in has not
been built, yet it’s gorgeous and owned
by men who touch jars
marked capable. I own facts about
Grecian Troy and one popular lie
I hear about Trojans: If u carry one,
u won’t need it. If u leave it,
u’ll seem clean or
childishly kind. I kill a fly minding its business
on a sidewalk inside of me today. Why? I know I’ll enjoy
the music. As a mother of something black
I owe flies nothing. Nothing. I owe
nothing. Remember that.
