i loves you bess/girlhood (as seen from the womb)
by ELISHA LUCKETT
in Fall 2023
Vincent Hunter, The Hum; The Hymn, 2016
i loves you bess
ortho blues
is mytholititurgical
parable, periodical, print: cut
-blank-
the new sound—
bent
is particlephanalia
all or else, a replica:
the meter of a headline
phrase, or, think, like
do you ever think of me?
you sing of me sometime,
stuck, gutter lover
brook of this river
broken book i call
a skin
break of my blood,
black couplets
stooped-on thin-blue porch-step
hooch-lipped hostesses,
pressed my label,
critical,
bare-backed,
skinny-made, scathed and
lord
i was a lover to you,
anyways
baby,
now i need you—
rub my liquor bottle fresh.
i need my children, see
right thru me when i
kill right over,
die for you.
though what i made of you
was sobriquet,
shorthand, loud-mouth
string-song burning in the moonnight
memories (were made of me),
when i was nothing more
and never all that brief–
enough–or quite that tall
but merely, Bess
i was the blues to you
girlhood (as seen from the womb)
life is short, so
short it counts the inch & meter
down the cabinet, to the floor
& counters back with curses
splayed in mustard, wipes
her fingers onto blue jeans
mama—
girl, come in here, girl
and wash these greens
for dinner
short,
so short
my young big-sister sulks-in
lettuce, traps up dirt
beneath her play-doh press-on nails and
colors
in the sink,
with yellow gunk and crayon dust
he calls,
and she has memorized
the line & dial
so mama won’t forget
the love
or baby born
before this new one
forming
in the laughter
of a man outdoors
in private,
she is praying on a baby sister,
someone she can dress with clay
so delicate to yellows
and the way they
splinter, that
sometimes, she
fades
into an ice-cold stream of
silver,
huddled
on the edge of darkness
Elisha Luckett (he/him) is a Black American filmmaker, photographer and poet raised between New Orleans, LA, and Houston, TX. His work is about finding silence, and the sound it takes to do so.