180 white gloves

by Khadijah Queen

after Lorraine O’Grady

smacking that ass
making a phat beat
(the thinking man’s Beyoncé
endlessly sketching
Isaach de Bankholé)

hair as urgent bulletin
cosmic drifts of hair
emitting important information
untapped talents and salted bravado
a syntactic turn-on

a paragraphic chasm
stirring up hallucinogenic
invader magic
resembling a hoarded apocalypse
fetishized resistance
against a corridor of wounds

a honey pot hand in a real
busy honeycomb
watching the bees
suck on brown girls’ legs — sharp
like hustlers or suicidal stargazers
pink lips first
pulling on a Kool

from Exercises in Painting (forthcoming: Bloof, 2016)

Khadijah Queen is the author of Conduit (Akashic Books 2008), Black Peculiar (Noemi Press 2011), and Fearful Beloved, forthcoming from Argos Books in fall 2015. Her chapbooks are No Isla Encanta (2007) and bloodroot (2015), both from dancing girl press; the digital chapbook I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (Sibling Rivalry 2013); and Exercises in Painting, due out from Bloof Books in 2016. AUTHOR PHOTO CREDIT: Thomas Sayers Ellis, 2011.