Film Studies
These black lovers on-screen
save themselves from concrete.
Credits roll. Once, my mother
throws a burnt log at my father,
and it must be like this: holding
on to love’s inevitable reel. Once,
the projection streams a finger
corked into a heart: knife-wound.
I tell the doctor, let go— unmind
the dark jet when my finger re-
turns to me. Narrative saves us.
If mirrors disappoint, consider
white eyes. Then flood cinemas
with light to drain the mind.
So look at trees neutrally,
says landscapes. A history book
infects them with bodies. I try
a different bingo. I don’t go on
walks depending on the news.
There’s always news. The lens
should not have considered us,
but there’s a block party in the sky.
My ancestors sway. I take pictures
to envy white people. To envy my-
self, says mirrors. Shut this door,
walk away from lectures on stars.
Schadenfreude the physicists as
this universe fails us one last time.
The sun’s bad season looms calm.
Perhaps we send someone to look,
die bravely to prevent supernova.
My body floats. Earth forgets me.
The producers greenlight a sequel,
watch you finger the burnt popcorn
at the bottom.
Listen to the poet read “Film Studies”
Prayer
Though I fail you generously and deeply, I fail you vertebrae, arpeggioed rosetta, I fail you ribs, glockenspieled rosetta; I carry your stone down with butterfingers and how early your shuddering mountain… Mist, blue sheet-music, sciatica. The long nerve stretches into aching fibers: it does not gift my black mother white wings. The Earth looms again Wagnerian-heavy, and American cows stumble onto it with thick warm gasses, readied now to be minced through drive-thrus. Sweetly, you press tar onto soil. I examine pictures of us. My coccyx is gemstone. It waits for your eyes to fill it with light. Where I pressed my lips to you, flower me there. Nearly every gender humors me with silence. Nights I wish your thin nails come dancing. Nights I wish my legs look keener than purity. My mottled thing I love you, my rattled thing I love you. My embryonic curses, I muzzle you here as rose-tinted lens. I promised you. They cannot see us here. Please. Fail me harder fail me faster yes, fail me.
Listen to the poet read “Prayer”
Film Studies II
I don’t hate it here. Nor my need to be illuminated.
Or to find myself in a museum, cautiously advertised
in a pamphlet. The statues fall at noon. We pull them
to the sea. Midnight I dive to press myself against bronze.
How I enact white guilt: patina. Fine. I hate it here, just a little.
Let’s meet like parallel lines. Or where you cut your finger
while you snip film with that special knife. The source
of the word cut— cut past the resolving image of your scar—
cut past my breath. Leave reels. In the prequel I am given
a backstory. Critics adore me there. Holding gold
at the ceremony I mouth appreciations. I say O. Maudlin
tongue, they stream me away. Someone as black as me
drowns. I sip red wine. The image recedes. The water echoes.
I hate that voice. I hear it here. It lives there in my teeth.
Listen to the poet read “Film Studies II”
Tawanda Mulalu was born in Gaborone, Botswana. He is the author of Nearness, forthcoming from The New Delta Review and is an inaugural member of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program. He has also served as a Ledecky Fellow for Harvard Magazine and the first Diversity and Inclusion Chair of The Harvard Advocate. His poems are published or forthcoming in Lana Turner, The Denver Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Salt Hill Journal and elsewhere. He mains Ken in Street Fighter.