F. Magdalene Austin

Today I ask for orange to make peace with yellow and not war across the page
Spilling on red, assaulting blue and running head first into black.

I long for the day when it was quite right to hate you because youre Irish, German, Spanish, a Jew. I long for the day when I didnt have to explain Why I wont hire you, house you or sell you my goods

I shiver at the thought of this freedom / At the thought of not wearing regret upon my heart or guilt as shoes / I wonder how I will walk with feet unbound

This is the day when I get to celebrate my own motherhood, my own ability to nurture and care for the whole me, my inner child and the empowered adult.

Each bold range, octave and cord pleads for recognition / And begs for you to know/ What unfolds before you is more

When the family gathers for Sunday meetings in a house with walls that hold blood six generations thick, When we dance in halls for charity events

Needing, requiring like breath, like shelter, like life itself to be drawn across a world of acrylics once more, just once more.

If I could write it out of me, write a few lines and whisk away the pain / I’d smear ink, /
I’d chicken scratch years of scorn and mocked name calling/ And I’d get over it.

A mind of mayhem
Twisted and tangled
Unsure of the way out
Looks to the North, to the South
To the Sea, to the Sky
And perceives every angle in rich, unadulterated fear.

© F. Magdalene

Then no one finds themselves at the end of our jokes/ at the head of lines they should not lead or / behind lines they never should have crossed.

They roam across the sky in a line of know how. Not one turns to the left or the right. Straight ahead, each spread across the expanse, one after the other waiting for permission to break.

I could bring in the breeze with a few clouds to break the sun’s sting Or shower upon a land fire and cut off its hunger for power. When dry grass gulps from drops that make your windowsills ping

Time and again Sleep has proven to sustain me and
To support the growth of my heart.
But I turn my back on this soul mate and
Reach for the cold hands of someone who knows me less intimately.