Two Times Black
Emile DeWeaver

They say poor is the new black.
So I’m drowning in two kinds
A hundred leagues under
All-that-is-me. The weight of this sea
is still, unchanging,
Placid,
and crushing the breath out of me.
I lift the whole world in every day I meet.
Forgive me when I sleep.

They say poor people cover this earth
Like flies on a day old dead mother.
So I’m a fly, a black speck
On the jellied eye
Of what was. Two kinds
In this buzz-saw buzzing, copulating-on-a-corpse life.
Hundred leagues on bare feet
To find that two-kind answer.
All-that-is-me
Beats through my black-speck testicles to fertilize
All-that-will-be.

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