Makeshift Borders

retracing frowns is how we forego boundaries, to chase greener passports.
on the counter,
brittle flesh sit beside waste bins to trash the little white we bring,
like children getting rid of their old toys.

we share our stories at regular intervals.
palms greasing palms,
slick treachery for a town killing its poetry.

cantos bear them all in rude lengths,
fourteen lines for thin migrants waiving cost for a snow hike.
no refrain,
till they lose weight to sanity.

the embassy has a room for rare gifting,
cages the negroes in one show of negritude.
in the White man’s court, a young man brights his color on a candle stand,
& asks why the others do not speak his language.

he would call the cops to knee on you,
till your whole race begs for their breath.

when kneeling is not prayer, it kills a black man.
it makes him unworthy of his skin — this one they wound to the bare floor,
stifling the shock on their knees.

without feeling a semblance of brother skinning brother,
making color seem like death race with a want for swoon:

a near-death experience in a steep top where no one knows how you exist,
how you lived your last breath sleeping the night lonely,
dreaming of hot dogs in cocktail leashes.

what you seem when they sniff their own blood stray,
careless as a hog with no room for contact tracing.
& when we do not know how to claim the body,
we forge a cold word that ends with casualty.