HOME

don’t worry, i already know
i don’t have a home-home
like my friend from kathmandu or my friend from cebu know
that, is the color of return:
brown
earth and all, from where things bloom
and bodies build
up to wilt
in each other’s
arms.

this will not be your diaspora poem:
we have enough milk & honey
at the grocery store
and golden nubian gap-toothed queens who long for their mother
africa
while chewing on the meat of leftover
languages

enough.
my poem is
a bad rap and abandoned
my poem is
a lost toothbrush and suicidal
my poem is
gentrification and in love with the wrong place-person
my poem is

a year of buildings
erupting across cityscapes
of body, self, me
like a row of teeth
browned from smoke –
the pollution
the age
the growth

my poem is
a bunch of planes –
i flew
to spit my-self out like
a hard landing
into womanhood
my poem is

my poem is
my poem is

not for you.

Artwork by Isaac Alarid Pease