about the author
dezireé a. brown is a black queer woman poet, scholar, and self-proclaimed “social justice warrior,” born and raised in Flint, MI. They are
currently an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University, and often claim to have been born with a poem written across their chest. A Poetry and Non-Fiction Editor for Heavy Feather Review, their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cartridge Lit, Puerto del Sol, The Boiler
Journal, Public Pool, and the anthology Best “New” African Poets 2015, among others. They tweet at @deziree_a_brown.
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One Poem
dezireé a. brown
an unfinished summation of anxiety.
yes I | spilled myself into bombs
filled with celandine and sour ocean,
waiting for its waves to wipe
me away. my body has booby trapped
itself without warning; I am only
wearing the same face I was yesterday.
can you hear this skin
tick tick tick | against this swell
of blue and brown and green and white?
botchlings comb my ribs for mountains
between deaths | while she peers
into my eyes, wedged open
between holes in the floor of the stream.
do it, Aria. reach through your star map
to pull a sun from the moon’s hungry
mouth | pour its molten song onto the wick
let Selene sweep my prayer through the ashes—