Blood Milk Mix
For Darcy Anderson

“Y’een gur stop,” he said to her calmly,
“till I break sumtin in yur face!”

“Come!” she said, “come!”
daring him to try, daring him to do it

is it violent language or romantic interplay

black-black, pretty-pretty school-age girl
whom, whenever I see her,
glimpse her, my pen fills with poetry
like breasts fill with milk when a woman’s with child

in the face of such a one, such a woman,
a boy threatens to break something, smash something

not cake, not egg, he has a bottle on his mind,
a culture far from mine

he threatens to bloody, to mutilate, a beautiful,
black face


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
8:13 p.m. 10.06.06