From the Book - First edition.
Self-portraits and other skies. --
Always use a gold crayon to color yourself in --
Self-portrait no. 1 (on becoming light) --
Ode to JET Magazine (when you be a rainbow with a streak of black) --
I try to imagine them smitten --
MTA transit exam attempt #4 --
Tanka suite on survival --
Litany for my fears and questions --
Is this your sky or mine? --
Eintou for possibility --
I learned to be a lady --
Pretending is like breathing --
3 am and the moon is curled like a "c" --
Self-portrait no. 5 (Phoenix and lullabies) --
I want us living, not just alive. --
Rx for little Black girls --
Girls like me are made of... --
Baby, what's your favorite body part? --
Dear future body (keep your skin thickk) --
A particular truth about grown folks' grits --
Self-portrait no. 7 (the other possible self) --
What answers can I give to the thing that I am --
When I tell our story of bees and vinegar --
Wishes for Black folk in Woody Allen movies --
Requiem for sea and chains --
My calm app lets me sleep with Idris Elba --
Recipe for keeping a man --
I want to see Black love on television --
What can grow in the dark --
Self-portrait no. 9 (what the mirror sees) --
Praise for Luke Cage's skin and starshine --
Something like gratitude to the girl on the 5 train --
List poem for things I try to love... --
After that night: Medusa calls out Poseidon --
Dear sunflowers who congregate without a permit --
Elegy to a portrait of us where you're smiling and I'm looking away --
Message pulled from a bottle at sea --
Last night inside my blood --
We make sin a good hymm --
If we should, who will fly after us. --
a while co-worker asks if my family sits down to have frank discussions about race --
Things I will tell my children --
One vow after the other --
The way the world holds you --
There are no unsacred spaces --
Self-portrait no. 13 (what's passed down in the making) --
When you kiss a smoker --
#45 presidential vibrations --
Notes toward a poem on self-care... --
Seeking language for peaches or joy --
Self-portrait no. 11 (climatology in flux) --
Things I can't say in this book --
All of my rejected and broken poem come together and form a gang --
Self-portrait no. 15 (interrogation under the moon).
