Two ripe platanos. Two green.
There’s no dark place
in a supermarket. The plastic wrappings
longing flesh. I asked Dawn
if she had to search fi cord.
She said yes. But ya na come back
wid it. I swallow a fistful of white rice.
I imagine living in a clay pueblo
slow. Anesthetized. Please enter your PIN.
I tell it to you now.
My queering consonance. Rendered
by your fingers.
You type me in slowly.
Each digit. A psalm.
My boy went in to get some razors.
My friend buys me a straw.
Curious bodega all at the edges. He does a line off the screen of his phone.
The girls across the street laugh on the stoop. The shuttling
of Court Street. Of turning onto Atlantic
from the shadow of a woman who passed. And said
bout to be at the projects. Goin Hoytways.
Hold my hand while I ascend
into the summer portapotty.
Help me pull my shorts up
a little more. Remember to dissolve your ego
in the adjusting of my pockets. A few days before
I watched Mike Tyson devour a bag of mushrooms
in the middle of an interview.
Now someone is stuffing a sandwich into my face.
I call him my messiah. We always forget the napkins.
Latif Askia Ba is a poet with Choreic Cerebral Palsy from Brooklyn, New York. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He is the author of The Machine Code of a Bleeding Moon. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-Day, and many other publications. His newest collection, The Choreic Period, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in January, 2025.
