POEMS Taylor Janay Manigoult
“somebody refused my closeness just to touch my flicker. i’m drawing together top and bottom teeth.”
-
Aki Vander Laan
PART is a compilation of poems. I hope the words sit with you and rest there. I hope you read out what you already felt in; hope you can relate.
Copyright Š 2016 Taylor Janay Manigoult.
POEMS 1. Why Do I Want Black Men, When They Have Hurt My Mother? 2. Keep Me Together, Getting Myself 3. i were a fence 4.it feels like this 5. and i see the images of when i thought someone was caring 6. coming on blankets as an act of divinity 7. lyrics in mailboxes 8. two me twice 9. felt me 11. my bones are different 12. pastry 13. Way Up I Feel Blessed 14. our lakes
PART
Why Do I Want Black Men, When They Have Hurt My Mother? I-I yearnd for his touch before hee touched me and licked his breath out of the air to trace my tongue back to lips that are only the familiar shape of supple. He sucks my skin at the same time he nicks it, and thrusts a rhythm too deep- but he cannot differentiate my moans of lust between shrieks of pain. He keeps going. Whether or not I come is lost in a fog of dark skin and sweat and sheets? Left in the morning with a smile on my face because I like the feeling between my legs, but stop pedaling and wonder when he will decide he wants to stick it someone else. I like to wrap my thighs around his waist, and the way he caresses my skin better than I do, touches my skin like a cartographer finger to a map, he knows me, he knows me, he knows me, right? Right right right there, but I wonder always when it feels the best it starts to hurt and then he comes and then he comes out- like the whole relationship I ponder the imminent ending. “Oh, when will my daddy leave?” I’m a Black woman, right? He knows me. Thrust deep inside me until it hurts and then leave.
1
Keep Me Together, Getting Myself forgot i had heart in New York but yeah, i used to live there, and i know imma die imma die because everytime i give my heart i leave that heart behind., keep it. when we went through- the tunnel i was like wow that feeling in the same spot, an old piece of cloth i forgot i know what it feels like too and i rubbed my fingertips over my heart to find the colored threads sewn from Rochester and Brooklyn, keep me together, the places where my mother loved her mother and we used to go there over the summers. the place where my father had his fathers and they both are in the ground. there was a place i had another father too i forgot where i leave my heart just like my mother's miscarriage i forgot. i have sadness in the past, a fine line when i look at it in my head it stretches so many yards back i can’t touch it but still a line that starts behind my eye and ends in our uterus it’s all sitting in me, forgot that i lost a brother once and i lived in New York once and i put my heart there
2
i were a fence make me guarded, off. like behind the three pieces of knot at the top of the suit tie, where we taught him to hit one another, i was on my teenth time of forgiving. i shut down the part that sparkled and i became afence.
3
it feels like this i give myself no site, no back-up spine we are still bent over. bents over, i hate hims. like my waist, then my dermis petal thighs rub there’s where i know he don’t respect me. but i still keep up my beat, and he gives me sparkles where i let him touch me.
4
and i see the images of when i thought someone was caring
(best read while listening to Pastry by Knxwledge)
part to scrape the sheath of keeping the sex, in the same duvet to dip and deceit me, he mimics the hand-kept safe my mother stowed in my chest. he were an acupuncturist and i a patient with pebbles and pins in me; the tomato that holds the pieces deflates from being poked and i'm sorry in bed there are pokes like tradition, like Christmas, pokes me for a giggle and i pull my right and left lip apart to be apart of habit. when i was twelve my mother said if i let the pokes glisten a count to two hands, I'd stretch so flaunting to ruins and rip. she right, i watch a rupture in my hurt because his needling was a different kind, the tampering that's a lie and hurt. not a doctor and not delicate
i want to go to the doctor but it scares me i haven’t felt the touch that wasn’t to fuck
6
coming on blankets as an act of divinity (after Ellen Kombiyil’s Slipping On Sidewalks As An Act of Divining)
that cadence got translated to hips thick carpet earthquake earth skin pulling against firm but, guest what she guessed feels like to move his head against rhythmless spotting and then driving in slack wet leather stream filled candies carry speech of moaning wax known through wick not flickering the rope and the callous painted on them the drawing of rope the cuts of melodic thread knots catch a fly there the strain it's tied a love letter written in rope not the breath when you wake bliss is knocked from lunge
7
lyrics in mailboxes i put my songs in them. reckless solos tossed like newspaperthat–every time–gravel eats up-every time thuds and the paper moldy-folds wilt * then its torrential and the moldy-folds wilt, its skin on lips mine are not for anybody, nor for any driveway-wants, glimpses, little slights, eye peeks and never my hymns * meters pale and slight from the gravel driveways with so many notes i thought anybody would swallow my sound to love in them. but the un under pesticides of being ignored wilted the skin on my lips and i can't sing anymore
8
two me twice looked at my body, served personality. they a guest but still guessed i’m good for sex and lied two me twice last night there was come in me swimming, neath hot water i perspired, i shed the wat are the steps to (stop-travel back there i said) “stop in there the word is gagged. is forced� in my mouth. i can still feel it him i can still feel it him
9
felt me mama’s blessing, where? in the same place he wrapped his thoughts around my skin and thigh. i chopped food and felt me in the sky in heaven i’m felt up by his hand blessings and there’s mamas blessing, right on the spot i felt a woman, but not if a woman felt me.
10
my bones are different rift and rift and rift discrepancy space long face parts where they split usup usup usup. i felt far and fog, waiting at the bus stop all alone‌ you go to the place for you people. part and part and part sand here and sienna there (color) when i was burnt, they took a little hurt and put me over there, over there.
11
pastry i forgot my skin was pastry- kicks on the surface kemp road was red necked fright, and the feeling of hard shea butter when my mother cooks bacon. sometimes the sheets pull on my hair, eyeing my eyelids back to when i was reigned love as olfactory and second coming last year i stripped the part. the beat and the rap not sacrosanct touching my stomach like tip toes breath out in cold air made no smoke reigned love and not the kind out.
12
Way Up I Feel Blessed the plaits that were, plates in the sink dampening the hair falls there in the drain. cutting the piece that was femme, the sidewalk felt my step and caught the hate fell off my shoulders in cracks. alight on my skin i caught hate me again up from cracks, the drain found i fell down it.
13
our lakes I need a folk smile; folk is my yesterdayon the back porch with Mama and Father when they never jab fingers, but would watch the water cadence of our lakes. back when I ate three meals a day my hair is home, but my eyelashes are alopecia from all the times I smile and it’s not folk. (all my eyelashes have fallen out) from, goodbye. goodbye goodbye goodbye
14
Taylor Janay Manigoult is a 20 year old artist living in Georgia. Her art is created from personal and delicate experience, and influenced by political identity. This art ranges from photography to poetry. Life in her body, and in location, accounts for her education and knowledge, rather than the time she has spent educated as an art student. Taylor has written for several literary journals, a few zines, and updates her own blog with work. manigoult.tumblr.com