FreezeRay:  Poetry With A Pop
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​Steffan Triplett

Dear Mr. Officer
        (using the lyrics of “Look Alive” by Rae Sremmurd)

        to us Boy look alive
like diamonds
        he stay moonwalkin
in the light
        a royal mane he so far out
in his smooth
        no he not out here to rumble
he just out here to be--

       but your lights turn
the night
       & you just need a criminal
hands up if
       you can promise
you see no target
       hands up when you
promise you
       look at Boy &
see light pour out

       see he just want to kick back
& you just want to spree
       but you grab a big one
& Boy get lit from toe to ceiling
       sounds like you get three strikes
all before breakfast
       see to it that judge will rock you
like a baby

Wiz Boy

i think there is a boy here
who wants to be allowed.

to be angry and free is a crime
in the countryside, in a castle
​
where we’ll never win the cup.

i’m not your hufflepuff, boy
this hair ain’t no fur, this

blood and i ain’t so warm as we look.
i’ve got a slickened tongue and scales

cologned of sweat and bottled firecracker smoke.

i made the sorting cap shiver with my
head only, and mind what I do on a broom.

i took a prefect to bed the other evening,
afterhours he quilled me love letters;

chocolate flowers in the dungeon.
​
see i’m a wiz boy, i’m black and
black and greening.

i dream my boggarts live outside their closets,
of a sectum sempra so damp and red,
​
and how everyone in the room is afraid of me.

To Kevin, Or Maybe You’re Reading the Movie Wrong
                                                                  (after Moonlight)
​

a black boy in the ocean
will drown if you let him
he’s always a boy & little
& wishing to be held by
the waves & stopped by
the breeze that’s clarity
you & him on the shore
you made you feel like the
only movie he’s ever seen

   Back at One
          (an erasure)


it’s how I used to say
                          the basis is,
               for all things,
                                         time.
​
              it’s emotional once you know
                            it’s undesirable
                                                        for us
                            to dream.

two—one and one
                            in love with fever--
​
                            say farewell to the dark
               little child whose life
                                         breathed           out
                                                        in time.

              like a dream on repeat, you
                                                     fall
                                         in love
​
with the start.

Steffan Triplett is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Pittsburgh. Steffan is an editor for the literary magazine Hot Metal Bridge, and his work appears or is forthcoming in The Offing, BOAAT, Wildness, The Shade Journal, and elsewhere. More of his erasures appear in pnk prl and Beecher's. Steffan is a Callaloo and Lambda Literary fellow, and a VONA alum. Follow him on Twitter @SteffanTriplett. 
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