My Coffee

My Coffee,

My coffee, whose hair is a celestial cloud

Whose thoughts are honest conceits

Whose waist is an event horizon

Whose waist is the waist of an elephant prostrating before a wooly mammoth

Whose mouth is the dark matter between Andromeda and Cygnus A

Whose teeth leave Clyfford Still streaks staining my enamel 

Whose tongue is Choctaw leather

Whose tongue is jet fuel

The tongue of a sugar cane Hoodoo doll with full-sized phosphorescent fish eyes 

Whose eyebrows are stovetop flames on low

My coffee, whose temples are humid juke joints in Arkansas 

With wise-wood windows sweating moonshine

My coffee, whose shoulders are Himalya’s sweat

Are streams that sing from jaguar pupils to condor wings over vivid valleys

My coffee, whose russet wrist has never known watches

Whose fingers are maracas rattling in unison with my pulse

Whose fingers are tobacco stems

My coffee, with armpits full of guerilla ears and Louisiana swamp moss

As Old Titus sings them blues

That are bunkers full of rusted weapons and underground hide-outs for North Star chasers

Whose arms are of swamp gods and warrior ghosts desperately resisting the colonies

Whose arms are smokey topaz lakes

Whose legs are scorched constellations

For the deceptive quest of any healing being, invisible or not

My coffee, whose calves are stained with pinto bean blood and sorcerer’s sap

Whose feet are mud’s blood

Taupe toenails made of chestnut eyed children who swam in lava, laughing

My coffee, whose neck is amber bubbles disappearing on the stagnant surface

Whose throat is the keeper of Valley Gods

Initiating Seekers in the cardboard brothel of Rhea each blood moon

My coffee, whose chest is the garnet galaxy

And full of Turritopsis nutricula

And sard codices of immortality

My coffee, whose torso is a laughing panther chewing wet planets

Whose swollen stomach is a coconut cracking from inner lightning

Is about to Amma

My coffee, with Ibis eyes helixing in the vortex

With a back full of preserved lotus pods 

And peacock feathers, fanning

My coffee, whose sixth chakra is labradorite and wet sand

And of steam that swirls through the fingers of someone who has just decided to lindy-hop

My coffee, with thighs of an ostrich

That are strong as keels

And all acceleration

My coffee, whose aft is astrology and horoscopes

Whose aft is the dark side of Neptune in autumn   

My coffee, whose morning sex conjures the morning star

An adrenaline-mine-refusing restraint

With the sex of baseball mitts from the ’20s as that petite Absinthe lady winks

My coffee, with the sex of Ovid’s lake

My coffee, with mosaic eyes full of Grenada’s gypsies doing duende dances in bubbling tar

With eyes that are obsidian cloaks and Moorish magnets 

With eyes of Ixchel

With eyes full of night skies drinking nebulas

My coffee, with eyes that are not colonial classrooms critiquing colonial constructions

My coffee with no sugar, no milk, no nothing, just black.

Malik Ameer Crumpler is a poet, rapper, composer, music producer, and editor who has released several albums, glitch art films, five poetry books, and one book of raps. He is the poetry editor and co-host of Paris Lit Up, editor-at-large of The Opiate, and co-founder of Those That This. Beneath The Underground: Collected Raps 2000- 2018 is Malik’s most recent book.

Artwork by Myriam Louise Taleb