Resolve
The quiet teenaged girl
with the black moon of an Afro
is also on the bus today,
the one who lowered her
long-lashed eyes and head
before her wispy “thank you”
the morning I said,
Your hair is beautiful.
No split ends.
Casual chic and clean.
She looks loved.
I hope she has been taught to protect her mind, her soul, her body,
loves herself enough not to let any boy
(if that is her preference)
to get too close before she is ready.
New York has passed Proposition 1,
but who knows what awaits her
now that toxic patriarchy won this round.
As one of the 92 percent,
it is cathartic
to post about
our exhaustion and frustration,
our need to rest,
post Navi Robins’s graphic,
proclaim our vindication
when fascism sets
what so many of us have tried to build
on fire,
as we lift our voices and sing,
We Told You So,
but I know,
sure as sunrise,
I will be out there,
throwing buckets of water at the inferno,
for the quiet girl
with the black moon of an Afro,
and all those like her.
Carla M. Cherry’s work has appeared in various publications, including Random Sample Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, La Libreta, ISLE, and Raising Mothers. She authored six books of poetry: Gnat Feathers and Butterfly Wings, Thirty Dollars and a Bowl of Soup, Honeysuckle Me, These Pearls Are Real, Stardust and Skin, and May He Bless My Name (iiPublishing), and two chapbooks: Clap Your Hands, Stomp Your Feet (Grandma Moses Press) and Sundays and Hot Buttered Rolls: A Granddaughter of Harlem Speaks (Finishing Line Press). She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the City College of New York.
The Marbled Sigh 