Auntie has a secret book she keeps.
Open the door of the mahogany nightstand.
Down on the left of the bottom shelf
Lies a white tome ordained in red thread
With blue and gold flakes in the finish.
Auntie’s written a thousand verses,
A hundred poems.
Stories that capture all the lives she’s lived.
The pages have no lines
Phrases spilt without context.
But every work is full of beautiful words
And you can smell her perfume on the bindings.
Auntie has a secret book she keeps
Tallied with names of those she meets.
Every one, the header to a prayer
Imposed on page through limerick and prose
She spoke to God in sonnets
and God replied in songs.
From the Author
The day I decided to start this blog, I had a dream. In the dream, I saw a 30-something black woman reaching into her bedside table to pull out an immaculate journal. I saw through her eyes, this nightly ritual she kept.
I could read her poems as she scanned through them, but she used such advanced language that I couldn’t glean the meaning of certain lines unless I read them over and over again.
Every time I reread a verse, however, the prose blossomed into deeper and deeper beauty that seemed to make my heart wrench and heal all at the same time.
It may be silly, but I’m jealous of this woman my mind has invented. I want to read from her book again.
But the most pressing thing is that I want a secret book of my own.
The Poetry of Ants 