RICKEY LAURENTIIS


The BODY be BLACK be BOLD
3 Miserable Sonnets

1 them
my teeth are just extensions of my skull.
i tell them my tongue can't handle wind.
they won't trust me, but mamma, no i didn't-
i followed all your orders and dulled
my lips that split my stutter.
     don't mutter, boy, they go, you did it.
i won't feel my ears any more.

when a man comes up and tells you swallow what
lady did you do? i bit the fingers
in my mouth before he clicked the metal.
the earth slipped down, i smacked, i knew who i be.
i, a bad tick before i hit the settled
mud. i, the shaking blues that lingers
as river climbed over the smooth hill of my gut.


2 it

     old river climbs hills without a gut
    and it didn't take long
            with carol in her mouth.

       she had two long, floppy
    fingers like jam -
          that boy, it's gotta be.

           though i wasn't really,
        though i couldn't
chose to be a man it just happens

 i guess i am?
i guess i gotta be


3 me

though i can't choose to be a man today it just happens that i is


a body making stranger barks when bent over the cute edge

i lap up river in my mouth and let it squeeze back of my throat, oh

this be the way flutes feel


now i see myself, here mamma i get myself, now i know my eyes

be shrunk native heads and my hair tight termite wings, these lips

were cut for whistles, when



my body slickskinned, dark, i turn


diamond, whole, hard, i break, slice, slash, nick and null
my teeth are just extensions of my skull



On Dismembering

It isn't true that only the Tallahatchie remembers,
-only that sack of river would grunt your name, Emmett.

How the shore must've bowed at the color of your spit
(and the trees still hear your hammering).

No bird forgets your thighs clapping in the dark or your
soles, red with mud. It must've been like candle flames,

swallowed all. How the sky had to eat herself, watchful
not to snag her tongue on the cotton-gin's blade. How

night had to snap away, but the moon sat patiently on.

Think of the fisher, his heels railed into the clay and lids
wrenched from his eyes. His proud teeth

had to match his muscle, pulling to its death his first catch—
and your face breaking in the morning chill.