Realest Poem: On Things of Which I am Ashamed

One of the realest and rawest poet Zora Howard performs her poem "On Things of Which I am Ashamed", which sees her recounting a relationship in which she "happened upon" a text thread between her partner and a woman "with the apostrophe in her name."

2 am. Night has settled into herself.  Unhooked her lady bits, the darling darkling and let them slide, hang, and sprawl open wide, she’s ready for a show. Outside the way your snoring claws at the still and silent, all is quiet. I watch you sleep.  Each of your breaths is fistful of stones dropped from my throat and anchored in my chest. I cannot believe you do not hear the bones, well-oiled cogs, rolling in my neck. I’m ‘bout to turn 2 am all the way up in here, up in here like DMX. Your face, the car before the levies break. I wonder if in the haze of your unassuming slumber you saw my fist diving for your lower lip. How I hovered over our box sized bed like a lunar eclipse. I’m ‘bout to knock yo’ lights out, nigga. You fin’ not know who, nor what, hit you when I’m finished. May Jesus and all his homies be my witness, I am not the one.


Now my intentions weren’t necessarily to get gully. The backside of mama’s hand learned me early to speak, as she calls it, “like I got some got damn sense,” so I rehearsed this. Ever since I happened upon the text thread…and when I say “happened upon” I meant looked for on purpose and discovered on one of my routine searches of your Facebook, phone, and pockets…between you and the trick with the apostrophe in her name. What kinda ghetto shit? She got punctuation in her name? Really? Like I gotta take a dramatic pause between the second and third syllable every time I talk about her? So, her parents couldn’t find out how to make that sound pop with a nuance assemblage of vowels, that’s what you saying? Ever since I happened upon that text thread, I’ve been wielding a bandolier of bite sized munitions behind my gums. This talking to? I’m ‘bout to bring the rain, bring the business, bring DayDay ‘n dem, bring Kingdom Come. It came out roughly like this:

“Who the? What? Mmh…  Why the hell is apostrophe in the face ass heifa all up in your messages like, ‘I left my Gucci shades in your room the other day?’ First, why is she in your room and how she got your number in the first place? Thirdly, why her shades gotta be Gucci? She think she better than me? Oh you think she better than me? You betta choose your words wisely. Matter fact, say something. I dare you to say something, ‘cause I’m this close to the edge, and I’m this much crazy. I’ll clean up so good, they won’t find your ass for days.”

To this day, I wonder what must have been running through your mind. Snatched from sleep to find me, neck at 90 degrees, your eyes, dilated orbs of terror scanning the room for any and all viable points of egress: the second story window, an air duct, or perhaps trying your luck straight through the drywall over my head.  And how I must have appeared: twitching, just a bit, a foaming pool of drool collecting in the knot of my lips, Robert Bruce Banner in the female flesh; green. So unsure of the skin I slink in, it stings. And I’m small. Smaller than the atom bomb for which my mother named me. Smaller than every grain that God has made of me. Smaller than our box sized bed.  I have no beef with your apostrophe bearing friend. I do not blame her, her Pucci shades, or even you. Instead, I give each of my days to this anthem to my beauty, and her thick bones, and her tongue like a whip, and her neck be like clockwork.  She’s a hefty beauty, sedentary and not in the mood to move. She sits the world of her weight on the windpipe of my self-doubt and dares it to say something.

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