American Suicide & Other Poems
American Suicide
Even now as I write this I am sick
with longing to be touched by the rough
kiss of mercy
but tonight under this moon I am full
of mounting calculations such as
what is the value of bread against
the cost of my consuming it when factored against
my short term sustainability and
what is the cost effectiveness of
my likely yet unanticipated departure
via lack via misadventure via my own hand
and in the event of such departure who
among the last 10 numbers in my text history
will be the first to notice my regrettable absence
if not my employer if not the IRS if not the rent man
who like lovers of my past
will come to my door
day or night
with practiced and particular concern
for my well being meaning contextually I am extremely important
to the ritual of all that’s due for collection—
Even now as I write this to my self and for anyone
who will pay attention far too late
the value of my statistical life
the millions I allegedly am worth
should I expire at my post
drops and rises
and drops like rainfall at the river’s lip and still
spreadeagled at the weeping
willow my pockets emptied
of granite and sandstone and obsidian
I ask the Prozac bottles and the Lord
Who will witness me?
Do not misunderstand
I did not come here to inform you
about the particulars of my body
nor did I come here
because I had nothing to say
about the femme you think you are looking at
or the homeland she is expected to clear
for you and you and you until
she can no longer drag the plough
I came here because I pledge allegiance
to no flag and I am holding
holding my final breath which
did you not know
is also yours
Benedetta Carlini at the Public Pool
If our sisters could see me now
would they know me, loosened
in this wind like a pink draw-
string? Or would they see instead
the proof of you on me, your thumb
still driftless at the peak
of my breast? Near the steps,
hot and aureoled against
afternoon’s deepening blue,
mothers hook their toddlers
to their hips and wade,
the soft arch of their backsides
stroking the water’s edge.
And the children, these wicked and
wondrous children, hurl themselves
into the deep with no thought
for where they spray.
This is how you come to me
in the hours I want it most.
A stone dropped in the lake
of my heart. I call your name
soundless from another shore
where you are all descent, falling
upon me as surely as dusk.
Who else but you would know me,
even in that light. Who else could
make me the man of our dreams.
Lust (2)
Natasha Oladokun is a Black, queer poet and essayist from Virginia. They hold fellowships from Cave Canem, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they were the inaugural First Wave Poetry fellow. Oladokun’s work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, The Yale Review, The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. She is writing her first poetry collection.
