HAIR
ASHLEY M. JONES
after Amiri Baraka
ooh la la
ooh la la
Blue Magic slathered on scalps
twists and braids and
oh how mama
makes us shine
oh how we clack
down
the hallways
in our braids
and beads
oh how
we love the way our pigtails swing–
but
then we see
those girls whose hair hangs,
free–
mama,
let us be like them
wow, how
woman
they are
wow oh wow how
they smell like mamas
and we are still burping up milk
oh mama
let us let our hair be grown,
let us be like them–
oh wow
what bright hot pain
this perm,
its everlasting promise
to kill
that curl
that chokes us
to make us pretty
make us pretty
we are pretty when it makes us
but what did God make us?
ooh la la
Blue Magic slathered on scalps
twists and braids and
oh how mama
makes us shine
oh how we clack
down
the hallways
in our braids
and beads
oh how
we love the way our pigtails swing–
but
then we see
those girls whose hair hangs,
free–
mama,
let us be like them
wow, how
woman
they are
wow oh wow how
they smell like mamas
and we are still burping up milk
oh mama
let us let our hair be grown,
let us be like them–
oh wow
what bright hot pain
this perm,
its everlasting promise
to kill
that curl
that chokes us
to make us pretty
make us pretty
we are pretty when it makes us
but what did God make us?
WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA? OR 2017: A HORROR FILM
ASHLEY M. JONES
a golden shovel variation after Ross Gay
All year, I have worked
against this feeling, this country, this raging wreck
from sea to shining sea. Do you know what it means
to wake each morning, to realize your own brown hands
aren’t enough to protect you, that the likelihood
of any given day being your last one on earth
is too high, that we are more likely
to find life on Mars than to ever actually fix that fatal likelihood,
hat we will probably just continue
with our meaningless Starbucks orders, fill the house
with Nina Simone and call that “woke,” value furry, collared creatures
over our own human kin? Sometimes, seems like they can smell
our otherness, seems like we sparkle with something fiery in the sunlight,
but not even our spectacular, crystalline glitter makes it easier
for them to believe that we have any inalienable right to breathe.
against this feeling, this country, this raging wreck
from sea to shining sea. Do you know what it means
to wake each morning, to realize your own brown hands
aren’t enough to protect you, that the likelihood
of any given day being your last one on earth
is too high, that we are more likely
to find life on Mars than to ever actually fix that fatal likelihood,
hat we will probably just continue
with our meaningless Starbucks orders, fill the house
with Nina Simone and call that “woke,” value furry, collared creatures
over our own human kin? Sometimes, seems like they can smell
our otherness, seems like we sparkle with something fiery in the sunlight,
but not even our spectacular, crystalline glitter makes it easier
for them to believe that we have any inalienable right to breathe.
ASHLEY M. JONES received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, Florida’s Little Free Libraries Initiative from 2013-2015, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets Contest at FIU. She was also a finalist in the 2015 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, Steel Toe Review, Fjords Review, Quiet Lunch, Poets Respond to Race Anthology, Night Owl, The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, pluck!, Valley Voices: New York School Edition, Fjords Review: Black American Edition, PMSPoemMemoirStory (where her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016), Kinfolks Quarterly, Tough Times in America Anthology, and Lucid Moose Press’ Like a Girl: Perspectives on Femininity Anthology. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, is forthcoming from Hub City Press in January 2017. She serves as an editor of PANK Magazine, and she currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts.
