Passing
BY CYNTHIA MANICK

: to bind the center of a peach pit heart

like a covered form; to smile tooth-wide

without looking too much alive; to cinch

a curved body like a rag; to avoid water-

melon and chicken; to seed thoughts of

bloodline fantasy – are you one part Indian

or two parts Creole?; to wear coffee-colored

dresses and cotton headscarves only in

the dark; to unremember the village of old

women who lifted their skirts and birthed

you; to resist the hush of spirituals; to enunciate

the h and roll your r’s; to avoid okra and

the black geodes of jazz; to fill the cracks with

dreams of southern porches and plums big

as a well; to pull-out the tar-brushed womb;

to drink sweet tea in dainty cups, deliberate

as a geisha waiting to wear new bones again

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Cynthia Manick is a Cave Canem fellow. She holds a BA from Hollins University in English and Philosophy and an MFA from the New School. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in African American Review, Callaloo, Mythium Literary Journal, Sou’wester, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Tidal Basin. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.