Jason B. Crawford
Ode to Melissa Elliot
Music makes me lose my shit
I be all jello jigglin on the dance floor
when your song comes on
Somehow find my body still able to split
open, hungry mouth of boy
Waiting for you to feed us a rhyme so sweet
it will nip at our knees
It’s funny these kids don’t know what you can
do with CGI and a trash bag
How you rubber putty your neck and spit in the
mouth of the industry
I was 11 walking around my grandmother’s
house
Wishing to be painted in all silver goddess
But couldn’t say your lyrics
13, trying to count the minute men
15, reversing all my lines just to see if It Work
And mama made a Cookbook of an album for
me to Pop That, Jiggle that fat in
With a lead single that stomped in like an HBCU
marching band
Music makes me lose control, let’s go
And everything becomes a fire hydrant double
Dutch we used to pass around the block
Until we were sweat and laughs
Now here I am, 25 and just queer enough to find
my feet back on your tune
The beat drops and the whole floor turns a night
sky
We sing drunk
I got a cute face,
chubby waist
thick legs in shape,
And there it is again
This dance floor becoming
a place where I feel fed
And you know
These white people don’t know how to jit/to
juke/to step/to jerk
How we been counting steps since the railroad
We, all groove and grooves and bone and black
and brilliant
Find space on this floor when you speak
Melissa, we will help you find the rain
And let the whole club drown in our dance
Music makes me lose my shit
I be all jello jigglin on the dance floor
when your song comes on
Somehow find my body still able to split
open, hungry mouth of boy
Waiting for you to feed us a rhyme so sweet
it will nip at our knees
It’s funny these kids don’t know what you can
do with CGI and a trash bag
How you rubber putty your neck and spit in the
mouth of the industry
I was 11 walking around my grandmother’s
house
Wishing to be painted in all silver goddess
But couldn’t say your lyrics
13, trying to count the minute men
15, reversing all my lines just to see if It Work
And mama made a Cookbook of an album for
me to Pop That, Jiggle that fat in
With a lead single that stomped in like an HBCU
marching band
Music makes me lose control, let’s go
And everything becomes a fire hydrant double
Dutch we used to pass around the block
Until we were sweat and laughs
Now here I am, 25 and just queer enough to find
my feet back on your tune
The beat drops and the whole floor turns a night
sky
We sing drunk
I got a cute face,
chubby waist
thick legs in shape,
And there it is again
This dance floor becoming
a place where I feel fed
And you know
These white people don’t know how to jit/to
juke/to step/to jerk
How we been counting steps since the railroad
We, all groove and grooves and bone and black
and brilliant
Find space on this floor when you speak
Melissa, we will help you find the rain
And let the whole club drown in our dance
Jason B. Crawford (He/They) is a black, nonbinary, bi-poly-queer writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. In addition to being published in online literary magazines, such as High Shelf Press, Wellington Street Review, Poached Hare, The Amistad, Royal Rose, and Kissing Dynamite, he is the Chief Editor for The Knight’s Library. Jason is a cofounder of the Poetry Collective MMPR, a group of poets who came together for laughs, bad memes, and nerd culture. He is also the recurring host of the poetry section for Ann Arbor Pride. Crawford has his Bachelors of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University. His debut chapbook collection Summertime Fine is due in 2020 through Variant Lit.