Thrush Poetry Journal
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Aricka Foreman

go here nothing to see home

the bitch barks in the dark yard

of an old dream before the molotov

crashed through my sleep when I

tell the story people’s eyes widen

like hardboiled eggs somewhere

I had slinger they said was my father

not sure if my brain latched to lore

or I caught like a moth some utterance

between the women who made me

over coffee his hands big enough to

gather the collar of my mother’s jacket

drag her out the car door I’ve always

suffered from terrible sleep my gift

to see through the walls of ogs I wake

wet and shivering a new worm in a fresh

body a child screaming for the end in the

morning I search the newspapers for their

name, syllables broken at the hands of

someone they loved how the news comes

frenzied like that scared bitch yelping

helpless at lightning and drums when men

ask me for water I know they mean my pussy

though they bring no buckets or even

a small glass sometimes I lay my dress

across their mouths pour and wait to see

which one won’t drown it’s the closest

I’ve come to love even if it’s not the right word





Aricka Foreman’s work has appeared in The Drunken Boat, Torch Poetry: A Journal for African American Women, Minnesota Review, Union Station Magazine, Vinyl Poetry, and Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the NextGeneration by Viking Penguin.  A Cave Canem and Callaloo Writer's Workshop Fellow, she is the Enumerate Editor for The Offing.




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