Drummer beats.
Beads fly.
Float in seats,
Boxes ply.
Velvet rose
Hockey puck
Medallion knows
Endymion fuck.
Indians in red
Crawfish bones
“Walk on,” said
Jazz Viper tones.
Mardi Gras secretes
Joy through the streets.
Geography of Hate
Nooses and guns
Trees hang: Fate.
Color runs.
Strange fruit
Dangling
Bodies: Form of loot
Strangling.
Mother wails.
Father dies.
Tear pales
Murder lies.
Jim Crow:
Who don’t know?
Boo- Dah!
Blood counts fight.
Rock skipping on this blue moon lay.
Rain checks light.
My midriff is exposed.
My little brown book is in hand.
Lotus Blossom blooms with no holds.
After all who needs land.
Its flower is in a daydream.
The intimacy of the blues,
Butterflies in teams
Their color leaves purple fools.
“Between random and chaos,” a piano rings,
“Is in the order or lack there of all things.”
Ama Birch has been published by Autonomedia, A Gathering of the Tribes, Vail/Vale, Les Figues Press, Ali Liebegott, Vitrine, Insert Blanc Press, CalArts Creative Writing Program, and the State University of New York. She has two books: Sonnet Boom! a collection of 88 contemporary Shakespearian Sonnets and Ferguson Interview Project, a book of twenty interviews about Mike Brown's death.