Poetry Suite by Amber Flame
“o, my silent complicity,
o, your silent complicity.
o, our villainy in loving
what chooses to do ill”
Poetry by Amber Flame
+++
I can’t breathe
my mother’s last words
gasped from the mouths
of Black men pinned
to the ground;
if she hadn’t had to say them
because she was dying
I would be explaining to her
why they torment me
anyway.
1. litany
what’s the difference
between Black people
& tires?
cutting your hair is
like shearing a sheep.
you are always
my little brown baby.
I don’t see
color.
I love tall brown men.
you are more of an exotic
beauty.
what do you mean? like
the color? purple?
you look like
your father.
your father sold drugs,
was probably a pimp.
tires don’t sing
when you put chains
on them.
2. arrest/arrest
1 : the taking or detaining in custody by authority of law.
his face would turn red if it wasn’t so BLACK and so it doesn’t turn at all / where it has been
pinned by a blue knee to gray asphalt and this has caused an inability to intake
air / with his last his bladder releases and he cries for his mama
2a : the act of stopping.
I didn’t believe what was happening was happening and so I did nothing / I ceased
movement / I ceased thought / what is the correct response / what should you do / when
someone tells you they can’t breathe
b : the condition of being stopped or inactive.
her face turns red and then blue and then gray / her lips are BLACK and so they move
rubbery and unwilling against mine while I force air incorrectly / which doesn’t matter
/ isn’t something you can do for anyone but yourself / not even your mama
3. sundown
in some towns
I am as dark as
it is willing to get
and so, I am pitch.
in some towns
the men rise
to the startle
of the birds
& reach for their guns.
I rise to greet
sullen faced strangers
in a living room, learn
to say family.
we don’t recognize
each other. we
have never met.
I want to tell you
nothing horrible
happens. except
always
something horrible
happens. today
in this town
the children peer
at me from behind
they mama’s knee
& no one ever sees
them staring.
in some towns
the women talk to my mother
over my head
about their husbands
who don’t watch football no more
now they disrespect the flag
and are unhappy
with this year’s crop
of wetbacks to work the trees.
in some towns
I am introduced
by possessive*
first:
my cousin
my niece
my granddaughter
so they’ll know where I belong
just in case.
*kinship terminology
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p.y.t.
i want my joy
a bouncy-bottomed young thing,
with more energy than i can comprehend
for that which will bring me pleasure.
i want debaucherous joy, sweet,
slippery joy, a joy that can come
again and again and again unceasing.
i want to hit joy's freak button,
to get all
the way
down
&
nasty
with joy,
walk around smelling like joy
just came all over my face
and i couldn't get drunk on joy fast enough
to catch it all. i want joy
to stain my clothes, i want joy
so delicious i mourn what spills
onto the floor, so i serve myself
another helping. i want joy
to want me. to ask for me
in the middle of the night; to choose
me as the best
cuddle buddy. i want
joy to be fucking real.
for joy to show up
with a whole self. teach me
something about how to mend. show me
the best way to shine.
+++
bedfellow
how do you kiss a ghost?
what kind of mouth meets
your hot breath? can you
say no, ghost.
no thank you.
how do you friend zone
a spirit determined
to want you,
demanding your attention
even if only when you (finally)
sleep?
what door you lock?
what clothes don’t ask
for it?
is there any agency in submission
to a haunting
or
must you lay in wait,
trying not to flinch
but you flinch
even when you hear it coming:
boo.
+++
a list of things not right but okay
for Whitney
o, this trashfire world, this
rubberburn stench, this
excrement on old frosted donut
of a president, of a judge,
of a government,
of a society,
of a world.
o, this
happiness springing eternal
in this muck,
o, this muck,
this muck,
this soil rich
manure laden muck.
o, storm, o, earth swallow,
o, torrents, torment
and refusal to feed
and clothe
and shelter our own.
o, these dead tired
ancestors, these too soon gone
talents in times of need.
o, celebrity celebrated death, o
truth unpeeled:
o, misdeeds
stripped away
too soon, stripped
away to reveal villains.
o, my silent complicity,
o, your silent complicity.
o, our villainy in loving
what chooses to do ill, the villainy,
o, laid aside
beliefs, what we uttered
fixed our mouths to speak
before we were woke,
o, our inherent fallacy,
the fallacy. how we play
hypocrite to our own natures.
o, self-righteous anger,
o, indignant growth,
o, pitiless setting aside
what we knew, once
now we learn
better,
o, late-bloom
of compassion.
o, fiery mantle
of justice,
o,
justice
and the stake
we are all tied to.
o, a stench, the stench,
o, the world burns and us with it.
call it not right, o, but call it ______.
+++
my girlfriend saves me a plum
says take it to work & eat it for lunch & I take it to work
– this one plum –
three days in a row,
but I get busy & forget to eat
& the plum ripens
by day three, almost too much;
by day three I am hungry and I am
guilty; my plum almost wasted
& what a shame that would be
for my girlfriend, who loves plums,
has set this one aside for me
& so on my way home I decide to eat –
because it is day three & almost too late, when I bite
the plum bursts,
an explosion,
thick sluice down my palms
across my glasses,
squirts
juice up my nose,
sticky bits onto eyelashes
& mouth full of sweet sweet almost too ripe plum,
mouth spilling with the wet coming apart,
I laugh
at the disaster it has become on my face,
at how there are no napkins in the car
& here I am, fists full
of fruit flesh
barely clinging to pit,
nothing but my tongue to lap it up.
I laugh because this plum seems to know me in my secret:
knows the need to be that desired thing
set aside for my lover’s mouth,
knows better than me what it is to be
both wanted and given freely
– what else is it to be in love?
secretly,
I want to be a plum in her mouth.
I want a bursting so ready
I come out my skin.
I want to be desired down to the pit,
to end tangy-fibered between her teeth,
sucked in sweet satisfaction;
when she says she loves,
no – really really really – loves
plums,
I want her to mean me.
& maybe I needed three days ripening
to understand what a mess of me
I’ll make to be consumed.
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Amber Flame is an award-winning writer, performer, composer, activist and educator who works extensively with both youth and adults. Amber Flame’s work has garnered artistic merit residencies with Hedgebrook, The Watering Hole, Vermont Studio Center, and Yefe Nof. Flame’s writing has been published in diverse arenas, including Winter Tangerine, Nailed Magazine, City Arts Magazine, Mom Egg Review, The Dialogist, Split This Rock, Black Heart Magazine, Sundress Publications, FreezeRay, Redivider Journal and more. A 2016 & 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, Jack Straw Writer Program, Artist Support Program, and New Media Gallerist, Flame was also a recipient of the CityArtist grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs. Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published through Write Bloody Press in 2017. Flame served as the 2017-2019 poetry Writer-in-Residence for Hugo House in Seattle, and is a queer Black single mama just one magic trick away from growing her unicorn horn.
