written by S. Shaw
He is splashed across the screen
Blk body, unclothed, floored
Prone on white cloth
An ad for today’s supermarket discount
Ribeye, beef tenderloin
Fruity Pebbles for the kid’s morning breakfast
With milk. I
Am mildly aroused, hungry
For the delectable
Negro, hungry
For the pound of blk flesh
So often whispered about
In refined white circles.
But I am blk and queer and feel
I have ownership over this blk body
So like mine, so full and fallen.
I ignore the white eyes burning
Fetish and pariah into our
Skin. I ignore
His need for privacy
And want to eat him whole.
There is the taste on the tongue like coffee or whisky
Bitter, acidic yet intoxicating. Blk coffee is
A drug. Newspapers love stories
Of fallen angels and blk
Pain.
I have always found blk
Vulnerability sexy. I’m titillated
By what I don’t see and want to
Look beneath the carefully
Placed smiley face
Want to be in the room
Talking politics, the price of blkness
How it feels to lay up under another man
Without reservation or reproof.
What it’s like to be free.
I am blk and queer
My desire shields me from
Objectification of the other
Gives me ownership.
I would never sell his image
All nude and open and
Unconscious and scared
To tabloids for profit. When
I view him splayed
Like a lynching victim in
A field of cotton, I am
Aroused and hungered.
But I am blk and queer and
Can’t be held accountable
For what the others do to
My brethren.
I am blk and queer and my hungers
Are justified.
I didn’t display him
An effigy
To be ogled. I have no
Power. I am just hungry
Wanting more.
*Andrew Gillum- blk politician
S. Shaw studied creative writing as an undergraduate at San Francisco State University focusing in fiction, and has attended writing conferences in various African nations, as well as attending writer retreats in the states trying to find where his talents lie. His poems have been published in African American Review, Temenos Literary Journal, The Missing Slate, as well as a short story in Mighty Real: An Anthology of African American Same Gender Loving Writing. He is a Cave Canem writers fellow and the author of the chapbook The House of Men from Glass Lyre Press- 2019.
Ramblr Magazine 