the black body found
next door near the house where
the blind girl lived
Blessed be
togetherness the act of
intercourse or intersection billy
club to skull knife
to gut hands noosed
around a neck
Blessed be praise
Blessed be
the length of a feather in a church
hat or the tension of a chord
held in the throat of a black girl belting
out amazing grace over a
body now gone
Blessed be the body now gone
Blessed be the seasons
Blessed be summer winter spring
Blessed be place
Blessed be
the black body found
in an alley behind that fashionable street
with those cafes on its sleeve
Blessed be time
Blessed be how the moon cuts itself in half
Blessed be the body now gone
in the time it takes
to place spit to finger to take
this page and turn
Added: Thursday, April 30, 2015 / From "The Language of Shedding Skin," (Main Street Rag, 2010). Used with permission.
Photo by Jennie Scott.
Niki Herd has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Obsidian, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, North American Review, The Feminist Wire, Feminist Formations, Split This Rock, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2, Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. Her collection, The Language of Shedding Skin, was published as part of the Editor’s Select Series for Main Street Rag. She currently lives in Houston.
