out

on daddy’s farm, the stallions we snared and stormed into dirt would rear high to stuff their mouths with sun, buck to kick stars out of sky. rope and spur seared servitude’s lesson through muscle and bone till they broke beneath brand. sometimes, i would stoop far and slow in front of them, low enough to squint up into fence crazed eyes and make it plain: i would smolder there till beast learned to labor with man on its back or till we whispered for the twelve gauge shout of slavery’s leaden psalm through its brain.

orphaned, swollen with texas roadside dust, i sit here counting broken years between youth’s lapping tongue and the cellblock’s crushing fifteen year kiss. i am a cinder on the prairie, bruise on the horizon purpling sundown’s sky. i push prison’s gunmetal bit from between teeth, spit sun from my head to see straight, wipe hope’s stardust from heel before loading each shackle scar into my gunnysack of voice. this is how i cipher my way home, stumble my way back to a shreveport woman’s arms.