a poem

poem
(written after presenting yesterday at the nova projects' conference, "talk'n about race."

i am afraid that they will eat
me first

in a famine of soul
i am closest to looking like fried chicken
the brown crust of peach cobbler
fresh baked cornbread

they will slurp my blood
crunch the gristle from my elbows
suck the scant meat
like hamhock
bones

roll slivers of my inner thigh
press the flesh onto tooth picks
muse
stretchmarks make for interesting texture

bellies cramped in starvation
savage hunger of tongues
rifling through clinic dumpsters
for my most tender parts

hidden
in steel green garbage cans
so they can’t devour the seeds that were almost
my eyes