⇝ / heavy: a burning haibun / untitled no. ∞
by SHY-ZAHIR MOSES
baaba, flying backwards, 2023
⇝
the go-go bird
and her funk
wings fluttered
the fling
flung
it til it flew
spread itself
across a long
lavender room
with a sweet
sauce breeze you
could only get
with a girl
from d.c
she
took
me to the
raise of
her skin
pulped red
poorly done
the complex of her
mouth savored
me there
said
i reminded her of
places i’d never
been an entwined
nest from
pushed
together beds
a home
a mess
of cool
rain made
us heavy
limp with
reward
desire
full-mouthed flesh
a rupture
of jazzing
bones gliding
over air never
committing to
the distance
heavy: a burning haibun
after torrin a. greathouse
i know the smell of rye ferment in the wrong glass with improper ice. i know its warmth. the difference in tinge, how to tell it’s cheap. the way the taste ricochets in a body’s pit, devoid of tinder. how it stings down a throat. how bitter it is. i know the smell of its fire marinating in a mouth. i know how it ignites extremities, causing them to intrude. windows, walls, bodies. i know who my father thinks he isn’t. a thirsty weight, drunk and callused from throwing himself into things. how he chooses to forget. how i fight to remember. i know how to hold things and store them deeply. not how to release them. that pain isn’t heavy without accompaniment. excruciating (pain), tortuous (pain), agonizing (pain). the way it lingers. i know when it buries itself and when it chooses to bud. when it chooses to bloom. the way it intrudes. the way it defines injury. the fault in the definition. there is never proof, only memory. only weight.
//
███the█████████████████████████████████ difference ██████████i█s ███ the way████ ████ a body████████████ow███████n████ ███████████████████████a████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████fight██████████ hold ██s ███████████████the██████ pain ███ without accompaniment. ███████████████ █████████████████████ it buries ████ when it ██████████████████████intrudes. ███ it defi█es █████ fault ███████there is never proof,████only weight████ ██████.
//
i██████a█m█████████n██████o██t█████████devoid ████ of██████a███n██████ extrem ██████e█ thirst██████ to██████fight██ (pain) is ██████ memory. ███████████.
untitled no. ∞
and there that god was again taunting you with his perforated
hands laughing at your dust-stained gown and blood-wrung gritted
knees he told you you were praying wrong
i told you there is no way to stop yourself from suffering
you know him and the ground well enough now
just form his chosen name into a song flat tune
the notes a gospel mouth around the beat i know you’ll forget
the words soon he’ll pretend not to notice your hot
sour breath there is no way to stop yourself from dying
couldn’t you taste it gargled in the back of your throat the mess
of garlic and honey spoiled your tongue and everything that spoke
came out like mud you weren’t clear enough i know you thought
there was something about that god worth praising but i remember
you weeping his face never got clearer and you still stayed a frail
intruded thing…
i took that to mean he chose not to hear you
Shy-Zahir Moses (they/them) is a Queer Black poet, scholar, and lover working on a way to make it out of Texas. They hold a B.A. in English from the University of Houston and are pursuing an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin. Shy has been writing poetry since they were seven and have only recently begun to take themselves seriously. Their work addresses their complex relationships with religion, family, and themself while remaining rooted in the fact that they will never fully make sense of anything. They spend their free time getting read to by Toni Morrison on Audible and concocting ways to write the perfect poetry collection.