i’m just a black goddess
I can fantasize
about a married man
holding me, breathing in
the scent of a new, shared morning
that suffocates the fragmented
perfume from last night still
asleep on my neck,
and the soft of his voice rattling
down my spine when he asks to plantin my womb a garden of wild flowers
that are never called by their names
or green vegetables that taste of water.
I can say “no.”
the same way I can ask a hard question,
but don’t.
I can fantasize about this
married man. it is legal, but
morally illegal. so wrong… but right
in body. what we share is as real
as a white seraph burning the shadow
of nakedness off my lips. as real as me
saying, “no,” to him. as real as
the shadow man that wanted to touch
girl-child me. as real as Aphrodite…
her fist-picked afro, and red silk
robe that accentuates her
childbearing hips. touch mine…
his palms salivate, his tongues wait
to taste-test the sap high on my thighs.
I’m just a black goddess he wants to fuck
not believe in.
ryne/river/god
water no get enemy played
the night he taught me to speak religion
like revolution/ like language/ like shallow kisses
from his lips branding ecclesiastes 9:3 on my jawbone.
under the moon, in his mouth, i was a prayer floating
dead body apologies upstream to allah/nun/jehovah
or behind the sky where our souls were first imagined.
his voice tangled nostalgia in airwaves and gently exploded
like pop rocks/ like 7UP cake/ like veuve clicquot
on an oil-slick tongue. he promised to hold then
release me before leaving. the way water will
let go of the horizon, soon and slowly.
Jordan Honeyblue is a poet from Baltimore, Maryland. In 2018, she received her B.A. from Morgan State University. She is currently a second year MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Kentucky. Her writing on heartwork seeks to illuminate the physicality and psychological components of vulnerability that affect the African American woman’s heart. She works to understand how neighborhood and home life, professional environments, family and psychological health may serve as advantages or disadvantages to the African American woman’s wellbeing.
