Dangle god over water. Don’t listen to his pleas & cock
your head to the side to see him turn red in the face. If he is
white, watch his pockets empty themselves
of rocks made of scripture, praise made of copper.
Remember that joy is a horse in the dirt,
without a rein or a rider. Let zeal crawl deep
in the muscle of your face, scurry down your legs,
grow callus on the bottoms of your feet.
Don’t forget. The spirit is a distillery of virtue
& fiction. Nothing is ever as true as death
or the newfound orgasm; the long-awaited yawn
of the universe—finally forgiving
the body in which it was bred,
with waves of dark light & star dust.
Contributor Notes
Faylita Hicks is a Black, Queer writer, mobile photographer, performance and Hip-Hop artist from San Marcos, TX. She was 2009 Grand Slam Champion of the Austin Poetry Slam and member of the 2007 and 2008 Neo Soul Poetry Slam teams. Her manuscript was a finalist in the 2016 Write Bloody Book contest and 2012 Button Poetry Chapbook contest. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Cosmonauts Avenue, Ink & Nebula, American Poetry Journal, Yes Poetry, AIPF Di-verse-city Anthology and others. In 2015, she released her first Hip Hop EP, Collision City. She is the founder and Creative Director of Arrondi Creative Productions and an artist on the roster for Hip-Hop collective Grid Squid Entertainment. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada College’s Low Residency program and received her Bachelor’s Degree from Texas State University in San Marcos, TX.
She is currently working on her manuscript, GLOW and a new EP, Neon Glow.
Twitter: @FaylitaHicks
