À La Carte: bifurcatin’ blues

Ma Rainey on my parade,
anyday. Wear suits to that rodeo
and yield it your birthing hips.

Sway ‘em on stage and own the gaze
of them who owned you. Heaven
can’t be white when you are nutmeg
ground for God. Speak easy to me

and rest real hard, tomorrow will be
another long one. I say hi to the ladies
and I love my thighs in loving theirs.
I walk my way home open,

because there are two alleys and I took
them both, I swallowed them up.

They said nobody could eat a street,
but look at me, I did.

 

Koby L. Omansky is a writer whose work has been published in FIVE:2:ONE, Moonsick Magazine, anthologies by Thoughtcrime Press and Platypus Press, and more. She works in youth advocacy in Brooklyn.