​[midnight with a new moon]
by Maya Marshall

​what do I know about being black
but my mother's hand and mine

but my sister's back in her white white wedding dress
(her newly widowed face under new white hair)

but my brother’s black boy feet running running
against the NES power pad

(didn't know what was chasing him)
I knew it meant dad
 
would visit and the boys would be boys
the finger's narrow escape from fire-
 
crackers mommy in the night with fire-
flies I caught

my black meant country club
kids got out of the pool and I didn't notice until years later

but what do I know
may as well be white
 
except my grandmother washed white
women's floors and was common poor

except shawty what yo name is? and you talk white, you stuck up bitch
what do I know about black
 
but my obese african american woman fibroids
or the policeman’s gun to my face
 
the black policewoman, saying
but what you really gon’ be college girl?
 
or a white man who loves me and is
noticing my blackness a lot less lately
 
or another black woman trying to check me
on any given day in my grown ass life
 
Girl don’t
you say: oh, she’s basically white
 
and I know you’re worried
we can’t both exist
 
in some rooms, you know,
even the fact of the conversation is treason
 
2.
[well bottom][a shadow][anansi] [hottentot berry baker jackson] [nostrils] [hearted] [coal] [lips]
[2 million American prisoners] [Baldwin Lorde hooks Morrison][lung][lives matter][enuf for ya?]

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Maya Marshall is an editor and a poet. She is co-founder of the revision journal underbellymag.com. Marshall has earned fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, Cave Canem, the Community of Writers, and The Watering Hole. She serves as a senior editor for [PANK] and works as a manuscript editor for Haymarket Books. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, Potomac Review, South Carolina Review, Blackbird and various other publications. She lives in Chicago.

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Winter 2019

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