Poetry by Danielle Cowan

               ​kelly bell photography CC



Body High

Yo ‘08, can we get high and watch
HGTV? Act like we
Luxurious enough to love it or list it
Just buy the best
View in West Bubbafuck—or cop that stone place
Some host called “quaint enough to be a summer home”
Cause HGTV ain’t quaint enough to use cop outside a sentence about “community safety.”
They watched it all through ‘05, his last
Summer alive
Spent spectating
Geography that could redirect death or at least
The sex worker asleep under our stairs, neighbors
Loud-mouths mastering Mookie and Tina vibes—the first
Niggas I saw Spike
Name but not imagine.

But you’re ‘08 so inside, we sleepin to
Sounds of next door gay
Bar-goers tentatively shooting 2 A.M. shots. And damn
They ain’t even built the Whole Foods we
Gotta walk through the projects to till 2010.
With this fiancé she watches like claiming, decorating
Aren’t about if but when.

Sorry, bro but before this eddie hits lemme
Get out the rest of this heavy shit...
You know that dumb happy Natasha Beddingfield song?
Released either right before or after you came around?
Deadass thought she said
“There’s no more life
And the darkness is light and my body
Cries. There’s only butterflies.”
Never told anyone but I fucked with that
Heavy. Maybe it’s because
Titi Tiffany told me that he was up
Somewhere sippin cherry Kool-Aid from a veritable chalice
So much strawberry ice cream his nappy
Curled baby girl used
To beg for before
Sticking her tongue back out so he could
Remove the offending texture.
And Titi Gladys with her Jehovah’s Witness joy
Said I’d be able to see
In Jehovah’s afterlife paradise.
Little me even knew I wouldn’t want that
But if we ain’t
Banking on bodies to
Balance out space... seems like we all blind.
Aw shit I’m stoner self-aware, aren’t I?
If I lost you I think it’s hitting.
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Danielle is a blind, Blackarican and queer poet Born and based in NYC. Her work has received an honorable mention in Causeway Lit’s Revolution Issue and was performed as part of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater‘s Block by Block project.