These Brazil Nut Nigga Toes
These nigga toes, bent beneath arched soles run, actual, quick.
These nigga toes run actual quick.
These nigga toes are full, involuted, tip nigga toe, throughout this ground.
These nigga toes are full, advanced.
These nigga toes are etched brackish from nigga work.
These nigga toes are hooked up to blackish nigga toes.
And spring come after lengthy winter, these nigga toes
the whitest a part of this pale nigga physique,
are a mirrored image of the code switchin
this black and white nigga man discovered early.
These nigga toes crack within the solar, and come summer time,
these nigga toes entice consideration from lotion manufacturing services
as a result of these nigga toes love to be naked.
These nigga toes.
These nigga toes are prolonged appendages, erudite ligaments
with shifting wiggling minds of their very own.
These nigga toes.
I stated these nigga toes are hooked up to blackish blackfeet, so
these nigga toes are dancing within the mud, dance the mud dance of my nigga folks.
And since these are erudite nigga toes, are monkey toes,
and are succesful, themselves, they are pouring one out for the homies.
These nigga toes.
These nigga toes include no content material warning,
however I’m warning you, these nigga toes are succesful!
I stated, these nigga toes are blackish.
These nigga toes aren’t black ish.
These nigga toes aren’t proper, white.
Do you even know what these nigga toes are?
These nigga toes aren’t Brazil nuts.
These nigga toes
are
simply,
Brazil
nuts,
the Caucasian man on the Christmas get together, with no content material
warning, politely advised me. Instructed all people
as he crunched with my satisfaction and brow sweat
a nigger toe
proud and black, powerful to crack, right into a nutcracker.
We used to name these,
nigger toes.
Effectively mista white man, for therefore lengthy I wished an apology however the fact is
these nigga toes don’t want your apology, see,
these nigga toes run actual quick, as quick as god rattling lightning.
These nigga toes are able to life-giving kicking, and tender two-step forgiving.
These nigga toes curl in life’s ecstasy.
These nigga toes dip in candy duende water, swirl total seas,
earlier than releasing physique earlier than brethren respiration heavy in silent rooms.
These nigga toes are hooked up to those silent rooms, these quiet folks,
and silent issues, these little secrets and techniques the world saves for me.
These nigga toes are hooked up to pale blackish toes
that carry to shins that carry a physique, blessed simply to be, nigga.
These nigga toes are blackish beauties, darkish black flowering ponies,
cracked, crinkled, rippled, erudite
black.
Jarrett Ziemer holds an MFA in Inventive Writing from Western Colorado College. His poem “A Fish-Tenkara” was awarded an honorable point out in Deep Wild Journal’s 2023 graduate scholar writing contest, and his poem “A Mattress as a Nest” was awarded an honorable point out in Dreamers’s 2023 Dreamers Writing Contest. Jarrett acquired an Worldwide Benefit Award within the Atlanta Assessment 2023 Worldwide Poetry Competitors, was the featured poet on the thirty third annual Headwaters Convention, and is a 2024 Jack Straw Fellow. You’ll find Jarrett’s work on his web site (jarrettgziemer.com) in addition to in About Place Journal, Belmont Story Assessment, Inventive Nonfiction, and different publications.
Learn Jarrett Ziemer’s different Letter to America poem, “lips to toes.”
Header photograph by HongYZhong, courtesy Shutterstock.
