a golden shovel
Poetry
the bonds of blood could no closer tie the knots of homegirls intertwined they stand each /
shoulder to shoulder or arms pretzeled together or tectonic hip plates slidin one body /
next to the other they quake and tremble and move the earth with laughter that has /
a thunder to it congregate in hair salons living rooms mama’s front porch with its /
drooping stairs and rotted wooden deck and whisper secrets and stories the art /
of oral tradition never loosened its /
grip so they recount from precious /
memory all they done girl lemme tell you! you not gon believe this baby prescribed /
and complete with pose /
points of entry preferred over once upon a time that /
chile gon drive me crazy! even /
or a man gon be a man and like clockwork the homegirls hum in /
agreement throw their concurrence like fresh roses sympathize in passion’s /
perfect timing i heard that you ain’t never lied i know that’s right say it again! a droll /
display for outsiders i’m sure these women their limbs tied together moving in contortions /
of joy or radical acceptance their speech haphazard voices stepping on each other like unsure waltzes /
but calculated somehow rhythmic like the samba or /
the moribayassa or the percolator finishing the other’s phrases the slight push /
away girl if you don’t gon somewhere with that! only to pull together once again as if of /
the same body how miraculous homegirls who praise and pain /
together outsiders check their knees or /
their sturdy legs or their jutted hip plates or their sooty elbows and try to hide your surprise when /
you discover they have the same scars it is not a /
coincidence outsider it is evidence of an analogous grief /
as ancient as suffering a nick on the collarbone a slice to the cheek a bruise on the forearm has /
rendered these homegirls identical to you at least ’cause though they was stabbed /
the same way and burned the same way or /
beat the same way they love pretzel tremble quake whisper into each other like they’ve never known hatred /
the truth is each stumbled into violence through different doors and chose to spend a lifetime healing each other hacked /
at the dead weeds of the others’ gardens until something finally could grow so it is /
the hard-won right of these homegirls to throw elegant necks back and rejoice sing to the sky in its /
full glory how vast they are too and
when exhausted by their own jubilance entangle themselves so fiercely who they are outside of each other means nothing /
and the weight of their antebellum pain is no longer theirs but someone else’s
tangie mitchell (she/her) is a poet, editor, and collage artist from North Carolina. Writing about Black, Southern, and working-class life, her work has been featured in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Aunt Chloe: A Journal of Artful Candor, and more. A Watering Hole Poetry Fellow and Obsidian Foundation alum, she holds an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Harlem, New York.