On summer evenings

by Samiya Bashir

When I do
I picture you
filleted and grilled

a dusting of olive
oil peeled ginger
and leeks. Seasons.

I look at you
see skin and char
smoldering scars

as script. Constellations
shimmer and smoke. My love,
bid me singe with you. I’ll sing.

Originally published in Gospel by Samiya Bashir, copyright 2009.

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MoSt will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.

Who But the Lord?

By Langston Hughes

I looked and I saw
That man they call the Law.
He was coming
Down the street at me!
I had visions in my head
Of being laid out cold and dead,
Or else murdered
By the third degree.

I said, O, Lord, if you can,
Save me from that man!
Don’t let him make a pulp out of me!
But the Lord he was not quick.
The Law raised up his stick
And beat the living hell out
Out of me!

Now, I do not understand
Why God don’t protect a man
From police brutality.
Being poor and black,
I’ve no weapon to strike back
So who but the Lord
Can protect me?

This poem was written in 1947.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.

A Bullfight, a Revolution, and a Langston

by Indigo Moor

Fondling a gin flask, Hemmingway quips, “we should live
In the ring, not die on our butts.” The matador executes
Verónica, wiping the brow of a two-ton Christ. Today
There are no Nationalists, no Loyalists, only Spaniards.

Ernest believes the Negro will have his day. That all
Locked doors shatter their frames when kicked open.
Three barbed flags dive like swimmers into the bull.
All poetry should be that direct, merciless to marrow.

Tercio de Muerte: The beast sways, cattail in a zephyr.
I wonder if he can taste his ancestors’ screams in the air?
We could hollow his horns and trumpet two civil wars:
America to Spain, his sacrifice uniting our struggles.

There’s a devil in the matador’s patience Sword
& muleta: the cape, red, not for the bull, but to hide
The blood. Every revolution needs a martyr. Mules
Pull the carcass around the ring like Hector’s at Troy.

Ernest says muleta and mulatto were meant to sound
Alike. Both carry a man’s hard choices locked in skin.

“A Bullfight, a Revolution, and a Langston” is from In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, © 2017.

MoSt Poetry Center will post a poem a day by a Black poet through the month of June.

The Tradition

by Jericho Brown

Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought
Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning
Names in heat, in elements classical
Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.
Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will
Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter
On this planet than when our dead fathers
Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.
Men like me and my brothers filmed what we
Planted for proof we existed before
Too late, sped the video to see blossoms
Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems
Where the world ends, everything cut down.
John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 7, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

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MoSt Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet every day through the month of June.

a song in the front yard

by Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

Originally published in Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. Copyright 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks.

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MoSt Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet through the month of June.