NIKIA CHANEY, FEATURED IN THE NEW OCEAN STATE REVIEW

untitled

and wanting
us to see she refutes
a little
bit of everything: the way
white women’s eyes stay closed,
the capital L of labor, mother
hood in only women
hood black,
the door
sound slamming its
finality into sprays
of thin dust in every room no she
says that
if it were
correct then
it would want the pickings
apart of its gooey laces
the transformations
of theory
in body becoming
like two people learning
how touch changes
the skin I am only
correct when I
dance with
your slight wrongness
let it
agitate us both into
something purple new and yes she
says smiling
it would smile in
refutation
all these new
ways laying the thick
of the argument
into tangible interwoven
plays both
sides now
multiplex as if those
feelings of being
seen were really all we
could
be sure of as you
said that morning
into my ear
let me differ let me
use
your mouth’s sound
breath thought-tongue as my
own
patchwork let
me make contemporary the frame
of all our fingers
new
things
here bloom

Nikia Chaney is the author of us mouth (University of Hell Press, 2018) and two chapbooks, Sis Fuss (2012, Orange Monkey Publishing) and ladies, please (2012, Dancing Girl Press). She has served as Inlandia Literary Laureate (2016-2018). Her poetry has been published in Sugarhouse Review, 491, Iowa Review, Vinyl, and Pearl, Welter, and Saranac.

Her memoir, ladybug, is out from Inlandia.