I am

A homegirl homegrown in Harrisburg but birthed in Brooklyn

to Bajans, Jamaicans and bold mamas from Alabama with big mouths, huge hearts and tongues sharp like a machete

I am the sunset in the serengeti, the seed of cotton trees sprouted in Sierra Leone

I am the leaf blown from the shores of Sénégal to Mobile, Brooklyn and back, tracking its way home

their roots run deep

in the soil beneath the trees

where Black bodies hung limp 

and blow in the breeze like leaves

i hope that if one day as you lie awake, 

crushed in a tiny space that may soon become your tomb 

where the booms from bombs replace the songs of birds, 

that you can’t still hear the silence of cowards across the world 

You can kill the poet, but you cannot kill the poetry

We wield our words as weapons, sharpen our pens like thorns

Pierce the flesh of our oppressors, draw blood like swords.