Atlanta Black

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

I’ve been taught bloodstones can cure a snakebite,
can stop the bleeding — most people forgot this
when the war ended. The war ended
depending on which war you mean: those we started,
before those, millenia ago and onward,
those which started me, which I lost and won —
these ever-blooming wounds.
I was built by wage. So I wage love and worse—
always another campaign to march across
a desert night for the cannon flash of your pale skin
settling in a silver lagoon of smoke at your breast.
I dismount my dark horse, bend to you there, deliver you
the hard pull of all my thirsts—
I learned Drink in a country of drought.( Read more... )

From Postcolonial Love Poem - pg 1