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Bay Poets

'a riff on another thing (yours and mines)' by poet Jelal Huyler

Jelal Huyler is a biracial Black poet from Oakland and born to a revolutionary Black woman. He is carrying on throughout this dissociative so-called reality in pursuit of the always present truth and healing.

a riff on another thing (yours and mines)   
first published in Ink & Nebula Magazine 

she tells me i am not the same/ i ask her when it was that i was

the thing she thinks i was/

she says/ exhausted/ you used to smile different/

my lips twitch a little/

and then teeth/ she tells me/

to shut up and takes back the bottle/

on the street where we stand/

men are pissing stories into the dark sides of buildings/

and there are/ shelves

of women/ stacked into their hurting

pumps/ books i'll never read/

and we are waiting for everything to make a little more sense/ maybe/

or for a tide to come in/ or something else to happen/

to be a person/ or/

even/

just a worthwhile problem .

poem from the poet's book : ' A MAN WAS LYNCHED TODAY ' on GAME OVER BOOKS press / https://www.gameoverbooks.com/store/p/a-man-was-lynched-today