t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher and Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, The African American Review, Vinyl, Gulf Coast, Tin House, Poetry and others. Her work has also been featured in several anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Nepantla: An Anthology of Queer Poets of Color. Winner of the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, how to get over, is available from Red Hen Press.
***
ain’t
suddenly these poems bore me these sentences
this syntax these lines fragments wagging they fingers
at me this ironic ebonics this king’s English
bastard cockney bores me these knock-kneed line breaks
this rhyme: internal identical metrical
Shakespearean especially boring whoring
some eternal infamy bores me surely this
diction these dictionaries we call brains call tongues
call mother these similes ain’t bulletproof niggas
still dead as dead niggas still black niggas as black
as black is— this bores me snores me to sleep but sleep
is not dead amen i wake up but this woke bores me
this writing this documenting this archiving
this truthtelling this shaming the devil this
publishing (exclusive or nah) ain’t a cloak ain’t
a savior (jesus or otherwise) ain’t a time
machine threatening reverse ain’t a nurse ain’t
a witch ain’t no magical stitch to hem up all them
wounds— boring every TV’s blackface laughing at me
bores me this prosody this scansion these lyrical
miracles glowed up on the page ain’t a suicide
bomb ain’t blowed up nothing corporate ain’t fed nobody
hungry ain’t nothing but a happy meal trap anthem
for the whiteboy singalong they mouths all neon coil
these rhythms all African these stanzas all white
& gaping this shiny MFA thesis this poet
laureate lux this Pulitzer bling this Pushcart
hustle this blacktie book award ain’t nothing
but a funeral a hymn a dirge a eulogy
an apology an afterthought so boring
i could cry could fuck could boogie could whiskey
could die right fucking here could die could die could die
could die could die could die could die— bored AF &
waiting for these promising poems these
impressive missives these polished sonnets to save me
to give me my entire life to be bread & wine
loaves & fishes manna & mango nectar but
they ain’t ain’t ain’t ain’t ain’t a sledgehammer ain’t
a deliverance ain’t a resurrection a rewind
button a second thought a benefit of the doubt
ain’t— ain’t— ain’t shit but words shined to a sequined shimmy
now gimme my fucking fellowship my POC retreat
my space amongst the trees my university
position my cup runneth over ain’t nothing
______to see here—
