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        • Churnage FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Daniel Staub Weinberg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Genevieve Rose Barr Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Eva Schultz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Samantha Malay Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • D Allen Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Hayley Harris Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Tony Peyser Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Santoni Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Julia Klatt Singer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Kathryn Kruse Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meg Freer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Moira Walsh Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Staab Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Anne Swannell Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Knott Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Jo Goren Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • CR Resetarits Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Ernestine Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Johnson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Charles J. March III Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Mosley Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Grace Desmarais Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Vieweg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Lawrence Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meca'Ayo Cole Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Andrea Rexilius Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christian Garduno Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Salma Ahmad Caller Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Glenn Thomas Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Yspol Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Michael Thompson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Rikki Santer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Gamache Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christine Williams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Beechem Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Imma Dunach Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Ginny Short Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Josh Lefkowitz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Carolyn Adams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
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​​​The Fissured Tongue Series 

My black

Maurya Kerr
Picture
If We Bask, by Yesica Mirambeaux, digital collage, 2022
tired of what she is & what she ain’t. My black
be one drop, two drop, three drop, four, sneaking

in the side door cuz fuck the brown paper
bag test & my black’ll straight up bombast

your western canon class. She got a mean
topknot game & tits to play so let us all

PRAISE BE to her cocoa areolae! — but alas
she a flat-ass wit no jive nor nae nae.

Mister My Mister, I black BLACK art on the daily,
sing the sads to a cyan sky at night, then

black myself to sleep on four hundred
count impure white cotton sheet.

My black does not find that story funny &
still HELLA NO you cannot touch her fro

& to & to & fro the west by whipped wrest.
In the brine o’ white she a fish outta water,

but drop her black ass into the Black Sea &
she’ll drown, can’t even wade in the white-

caps cuz you know no colored girl can swim.
Damnit to hell all ash-n-thirsty skin, so c’mon

lover, gimme some shea shea butter to put
in her kinky hair kinking high n’ dry & everywhere.

Sister My Sister, she a wannabe black sorority, so I sent
her skinny ass to college but she got as mad as a black

outta hell, so I sent her to grad school & now
she impatient like a rocket headed to coordinates

Whitey On The Moon. Why just yesterday
she blacked the fuck out of a lady who insisted that

‘She And The Other Whites Just Need A Little
Encouragement.’ DAMN! You tellin’ me there ain’t

even one albumen woman with any degree
of acumen?! Poor damsel-of-the-thresh crying

like a holy ghosted baby in her ivory highchair & don’t 
nobody even dare Tuesday blackout square near me, here,

in the blackground, where the colored girls go to     

                                                          step

                                                         touch

                                                          step

                                                         touch

                                                          shimmy   shimmy     
                                                          coco   pop
                
                                                          shimmy   shimmy
                                                          pop  a  cock  &

I loves me a java-colored Jesus who saves & saves.

But my black still diabetes & strokes, suicides &
blinds, nightmares & retches then wakes to play

the possum playing dead cuz black always prey.
See her over there swayin’ black & forth, a regular

at the funereal & she dirge black so whitey
G E T   T H E   F U C K   B A C K.

— death & death & death & death &— 

So please forgive us, black & I, for skippin’
our rise-n-shine prayers today. She & me

made some short work of some crackers
in our white sheets last night &

now  we  tired.
About the Author

Maurya Kerr is a Bay-area based artist whose poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize and appears in multiple journals. Much of her artistic work, across disciplines, is focused on racialized people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Maurya was a 2021/22 UC Berkeley ARC (Arts Research Center) Poetry & the Senses Fellow, and her work was chosen by Jericho Brown as a runner-up in Southern Humanities Review’s 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize.
​
About the Work

""My black" is part of a larger group of poems about my experiences in the world as a mixed-race, light-skinned black woman, set to be published as a chapbook entitled MUTTOLOGY  in March 2023 by Harbor Editions."

About the Author's Process


"I am so fortunate to be part of a writing group/class that has been, and remains, instrumental to the development of my craft — I don't think I would be a published poet without their support and direct, concise feedback."
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