5 poems & 1 video
Oncology Elegy
The white oncologist widens my third eye
with if
with maybe
with could be
with pet/scan
with tumor
within 24 hours we’ll know
The white oncologist snatches out my heart
squeezes it tight
like the knot
on Aunt Jemima’s headscarf
with mammy
with will I be a widow?
The House That Was My Husband’s Body
A shack,
a splintered door,
gray windows.
I stand alone teetering
on his broken porch.
Where’s the tarnished knob
my brown hand turns?
Where’s the hallway,
a speck of light
that leads to his parlor?
Can we dance tonight?
How do I steady
his fragile frame,
hold bones that loosen
like floorboards?
Husband’s Instructions
Verse Chorus of Ancestors
1. Do not resuscitate “Oh Lord I want two wings”
2. Do not cremate “Oh Lord I want two wings”
3. Do not bury me in a pale blue suit “ Oh Lord I want two wings”
4. Do not open the casket “ So the world can’t do me no harm”
like they did for that boy
they found bruised-blue
in the river
Revolutionary Fragments
My husband’s throat revolts
(un)swallows:
stings
of tasers
blows
of knuckles
strikes
of billy clubs
blasts
of shotguns
cracks
of bullwhips
clinks
of shackles
Can you smell rebellion?
The House that was my Husband’s Body
brick hurled
match lit
flames ablaze
husband’s body
burning tenement:
slick black-
berry brick
scarred charred
smoke chokes
the
gorgeous
black
boy
in
him
like
Rodney
like
Eric
like
George
Lolita Stewart-White is a poet, filmmaker and educator who lives and works in Miami. She is a Cave Canem alumni and Push Cart award nominee. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in the African American Review, Callaloo, Beloit Poetry Journal, Rattle, and the Iowa Review. Lolita has received fellowships from Callaloo Writers Workshop, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Watering Hole. She was the winner of the Paris-American Reader Series Prize and the Langston Hughes's fellow at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her films have been exhibited at the Los Angeles Pan African Film and Arts Festival, Seattle Langston Hughes Film Festival and Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami.