Michael Jackson was a lougawou
by Mckendy Fils-Aimé 

& no one could tell me otherwise 
at eight years old. sitting in the dark

of my family's living room, on the border 
of bedtime, i watched his lover escape

into a movie theater from a zombie
faced Michael. who knew terror

could high kick like that, could spin 
& lean into an acute angle 

bullying gravity, could command
a group of the undead into mimicry?

if you asked me, he was a mirror
image of the silhouettes that called

out to my mother in her dreams,
stared with shadow-piercing flaxen eyes,

asking her to come close 
& share the details of our lives. her dreams

never dreams, but instruments
hungry to play our death knells. 

or he was like the man in the grocery store 
whose smile peeled away like a first skin 

when he pushed my cousin 
onto the freezer aisle floor. a timecard 

punched into the graveyard shift 
of inhumanity. Michael looks the same way

at the end of the Thriller video. i swear 
there’s a scene where you can see him

throwing on his mansuit before 
his lover wakes up, where all she’ll know

is his arm wrapped around her
& not how he looks back at the camera

& smiles, his eyes: two yellow orbs
slitted vantablack. how could i not scream 

when his gaze mentored nightmares?
how could i believe my mother 

when she came running 
it’s not real. it’s not real 

knowing each time she slept
all she heard were rebuttals.

---

Mckendy Fils-Aimé is a New England based Haitian American poet, organizer, and teaching artist. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and Periplus. Over the span of nearly two decades, Mckendy has represented New England in several regional and national poetry slams, making numerous semi-final and final stage appearances. Mckendy’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Adroit, Obsidian, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection will be published by YesYes Books in 2026.