Strange Fruit After Billie Holiday

Your limbs are tendrils 

Flailing in protest offbeat

to the beat of hearts 

Working

  to understand

  your speech. 

 

Seek the neverending sending of messages that

teach upstanding misunderstanding of 

 

Your hair and why it crinkles

So early after water stipples hit 

Freshly 

Burned 

Skin 

Cells that work against it 

Turn you thick to sense it 

Coming 

Before 

The wind

 

Your reaction

Almost human

Flesh

always brazen to the thought of the world we’re in. 

 

Mattie Grace Levy

I'm a black woman, a classically trained oboist, a self-taught composer, and an introspective poet trying to comprehend my thoughts.

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