aziza meets charlie parker in
an unspecified bar on 52nd street
and she looked at him and he was a forest of floating caskets and that was just in the eyes and she was his appetites shovel him at the joints and it is frightening to see a wrist mid-excavation the shock the same as seeing your mother naked to see the scars of your birth on her abdomen she can tell he wants to run away but he has at least ten small graves keeping his body at the counter and what she did next was out of pity and there was no behavior to give it a name a name is one of many small borrowings and she wanted to own something that day she took his liter of whiskey broke the bottle into a set of shark teeth and carved a front door into her neck she looked at charlie and coughed walk inside this city is perishable but it’s warm here bird don’t you know I would die for you
by Aziza Barnes
Aziza Barnes is 20-year-old brown woman poet from Los Angeles. Her chapbook, me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun is published through Button Poetry: http://buttonpoetry.com/product/me-aunt-jemima-and-the-nailgun/. She is a senior at NYU.