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She Said in Bed
When I die let my body fly.
Book me a trip on a rocket ship
and launch me at dawn. Play some
Hendrix and a Nina Simone song. Give me
a eulogy through a static headset. Let the
booster jets be my pallbearers and give
me a smoke plume in lieu of a tomb. And
everyone awake who tries to fake
some caffeinated joy can take their eyes
out of their latte chai and turn their face
to space instead.
What would you like for breakfast? I said.
She said in bed Let me sail on solar winds over
all of the lunar seas
past crises and clouds and tranquility
nectar and moisture and fertility
even past the pyramids NASA never lets us see
until my body passes right over the moon.
Let me float like a balloon until I’m over Venus—
the namesake of flytraps
the reason for jimmy hats
both deity and devil and a woman
at that. Let my ship land on a mountain cap
and let my body burn in a snowfall of lead. she said.
What do you want for breakfast? I said.
Let me bathe in 700 degrees
under storms of pure CO2.
Let me walk without shoes
on volcanic plains and wash my hair
in sulfuric rains just don’t leave me
down here. On Earth I watch
fathers get shot sitting in patrol cars
while cops shoot sons with empty hands.
Bury me
on a land where I can never stand
in air I can never breathe
on a planet I can never know
around a star I cannot see.
Let me leave this world when I am dead.
And chocolate chip pancakes please she said.
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Quincy Scott Jones is an associate professor at Barnard College, the poetry advisor for Columbia University Undergraduate Creative Writing, and the author of The T-Bone Series and How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children. His work has appeared in the African American Review, The North American Review, the Bellingham Review, Love Jawns: A Mixtape, and The Feminist Wire. With Nina Sharma he co-curates Blackshop, a column highlighting BIPOC artists. His graphic narrative, BlackNerd, is in the works. [Author photo by Dominique Sindayiganza]
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Harmonia Rosales, Birth of Oshun, detail, 2017, oil on canvas. Rosales uses Greek and Roman mythologies to draw viewers in, as in this work— modeled on Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”—which depicts the Yòrúba goddess Oshun.
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