Grocery

by Camonghne Felix

I’m trying to get it all
Out and it burns like

Fucking hell, and I’m
So pissed off and all

There is to me is what
Silence I can’t conquer

I’m guilty of throwing  
Drinks at it, keying its

Car, saying fuck you
Here’s my ass to kiss

Here’s my tongue to
Split, my body to butterfly

I don’t have any mother
Fucking poems, I can’t

Write because it doesn’t
Really count, does it

The time I spend chasing
The cat that got out, the

Time it spends trying to
Get back to the shelter

Man made in ignorance.
Maybe I am not meant

For your nature, maybe I’m
A humble, sprawling beast

Maybe I eat up the produce
Before it ripes, maybe that’s

All that matters in loving any-
Thing, that it has time to

Brown before the hunger
Covets the starch.

Camonghne Felix, M.A., has received Fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Poets House and is an alumnus of the NYU Arts Politics M.A. program and the Bard MFA program. The 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee is the author of the chapbook Yolk, was recently listed by Black Youth Project as a "Black Girl From the Future You Should Know," and has been published in various outlets, including Poetry, Academy of American Poets, Buzzfeed Reader, Teen Vogue, PEN America, The Offing and The Shallow Ends. Her debut collection of poems, Build Yourself a Boat, was a 2017 University of Wisconsin Press Brittingham & Pollak Prize finalist, was shortlisted for the 2017 Fordham University Poets Out Loud prize, and is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2019.