JUSTIN DAVIS
Still Brazy
How can I not think about everything at once:
Syria, schedules, seeping noise of fire trucks, scientists
losing funding, Slick Rick and sickness and the symbolism
of wearing all those chains. There is always a rapper talking
about chains and whips, about how we nettle over-
seers with success. Quavo says,
All these damn chains,
modern slavery / but this ain’t 1800, so they pay me.
Hov Freudian-slipped in European whips. For some,
the chains and whips also mean sex. And what about
sipping Wock, sunflowers, soliloquies of loss?
Fuck all this solipsism and sorcery: somehow there
is always another shooting, another slur bursting
into synonyms. Somehow the snow keeps
smothering my calm. Why can’t we soak up sun
and photosynthesize a nigga, let him crawl out from
between two glucose molecules, let him breathe and breathe
and breathe? When I go out, I want it to kiss me like a river
in Harlem. I want to slip into a blouse if I feel like it.
I ain’t got time for your Soundcloud, your Candace, your
Owens, save the Sharpton speech for Lil Pump.
How can I not think about everything at once:
Syria, schedules, seeping noise of fire trucks, scientists
losing funding, Slick Rick and sickness and the symbolism
of wearing all those chains. There is always a rapper talking
about chains and whips, about how we nettle over-
seers with success. Quavo says,
All these damn chains,
modern slavery / but this ain’t 1800, so they pay me.
Hov Freudian-slipped in European whips. For some,
the chains and whips also mean sex. And what about
sipping Wock, sunflowers, soliloquies of loss?
Fuck all this solipsism and sorcery: somehow there
is always another shooting, another slur bursting
into synonyms. Somehow the snow keeps
smothering my calm. Why can’t we soak up sun
and photosynthesize a nigga, let him crawl out from
between two glucose molecules, let him breathe and breathe
and breathe? When I go out, I want it to kiss me like a river
in Harlem. I want to slip into a blouse if I feel like it.
I ain’t got time for your Soundcloud, your Candace, your
Owens, save the Sharpton speech for Lil Pump.
Justin Davis earned his BA in Literature & Creative Writing from Rhodes College, where he received the Anne Howard Bailey Prize in Poetry. A 2018 Pushcart nominee, his poems and fiction are published or forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, BOAAT, decomP, and Bodega. He works as a community organizer in Memphis, Tennessee.