To the Black men dead at 27, my soul brothers all the way. i had some money, made 
the best paintings. was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. i was 
awful to people.
                  My crooked body = a suspended explosion of cherries and pomegranates     
by the time those spiders were done chowing. 

To punks tagging my crown on melting tapioca brick   pinked and peeled by pollution 
i love you. i want to laugh with you                   as our TEETH turn blue

To Jay Z and the LilyWhites (band name) auctioning my cobwebs for millions, give 
them back to Brooklyn           to her park benches i slept on when i was 19 
before they laid the anti-homeless spikes         
            Or give them to my ex Suzanne            she’ll know the whats what

Leafless trees look indecisive from here = which direction to die in? Leafless wood 
branches like our hair
                                       Insects scratch their backs against blades of ryegrass          
           playful brush      i remember praying between her legs, her heels hovering 
my shoulder blades in a delicate
ugly.                           
          One interviewer compliments my “primal expressions”

Pond leaves float flat like sliced fruits          a ruffle-damp dress dissolving. 

She broke up with me, so i coated her paintings tar     the top of a moon pie cookie
   
i should’ve drawn more pigs blushing at scooped up Latin folk       
cops are a whole new landscape of asshole.                
irony of an unmasked government goon.      
                                               with my dead-made millions         should’ve crashed 
a slaveship into a freemason AA meeting

What do you think about politics, young family plucking yellow irises from the koi? 
[“          ©        ”].  Thought so.
                                                At 25, dress zippers catch on skin = roots you in place                                        

                                                                                                          like an ape
Another interviewer.       this time i “must mix poverty into the paint vat.”     
                                  For only $60,000 a month you can rent Basquiat’s Final 
New York Apartment and Studio.      
                                       Cried a Nile on her
                                                                        lap after i ran out of things to buy. Hated 
myself too much. loved myself too much. Thought Earth was pining for more martyrs 
but it’s overflowing

_he/it/i_ wants to draw like a child but not love myself like one 

Built imaginary castle walls around joy to sit outside and stare through the cracks   
pushing my eyeballs in like quarters slotted through a gumball machine

Silence. The LilyWhites are coming to a decision. Are you or are you not 
our undiscovered genius of the mississippi delta       Griot blues

-man    who saw “number twenty seven” coming 

i never found a way to sleep with myself

Your nephew finds Nat Turner hiding in the backyard,
hymning below his climbing tree. For safekeeping, he
builds Uncle Nat a cardboard fort, brings flashlights for
ghost stories. For food, they plant rhubarb and
cantaloupe. They’ll never get to harvest. It would’ve
tasted like Blues. No, it would’ve tasted like an Alliyah
record humming over a Black baby’s crib. This is a
coming-of-age story. Your nephew loves asking
questions. What grows a boy into a boogeyman? When
were you hungriest for a dead master? You try. You
truly try to answer them all, but there’s so little lifetime
to teach living. Go ahead, Auntie. Stuff your mojo bags.
Print your tiny witnessings from the Fujifilm
one-time-use camera. Buy your nephew those comics
where heroes are bulletproof and villains aren’t. Pray he
won’t get wrong ideas. Tonight, they fall asleep on
grassbeds, beneath vultures as plentiful as moonlight. If
time is flying, which direction are the wind currents? It
seems like only two Thanksgivings ago, they were
playing in a sand pit with a Tonka trunk. Nat was once
your nephew. Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and
Malcolm X once walked up and down your street,
throwing the party snaps you gave them. Yesterdays ago,
it was Assata Shakur and Angela Davis tapping on your
hip, asking for 75 cents to go down to the Candy Lady.
Your throat dries saying all their names before bedtime.
“Please,” you say, “someone look out for my nephew
and my other nephew and my niece and my goddaughter
and my son and my daughter and her daughter and my
neighbor’s child.” You knock on wood after you conjure
each one of our futures. You knock and knock and knock.

Martheaus Perkins is a first-generation college graduate and son of a single Black mother. He is the author of The Grace of Black Mothers (Trio House Press). His writing has appeared in BWR, diode, Obsidian, Mizna, and Beloit. The name "Martheaus" is a collection of each woman who raised him: “Mar-” was his grandmother, “-Thea-” is his mother, and “-us” represents the aunties who created the name. Find him at martheausperkins.com.


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