Emerald City Sequence as The Forgotten Color Blue

nobody ever films the part
where the indigo caked hands
do the hustle and cry after.

in the haint blue dark the music changes
from an ode to opulence to that one song
your father played over and over after grandma died.

his mother whom he called by her name
until he met your mother
                       who had just lost hers.

and it’s not like he cried in front of you
but you knew Aretha had to, given the way
she could hollow out              a piano to make it sob on a record.

so maybe that was enough for the both of them.
this guttural cerulean before football practice.
now here         after the fifth time this week

you’re both begging not to play something.
in your defense you didn’t have a name for this yet,
the cradle of all his parts.

today you woke up and stretched a swamp across the room
in her name. im saying ain’t no way it’s not connected,
you know.        time,
                                               grief,
                                                                     the color blue.

the augment of performance. this is the part of the movie
you realize it’s the first time you’ve seen him
not dance around something.

the music stops            and the city empties itself.
you understand now how a color could be
a mythical moon,         a mood,          or a genre of Black folk.

Listen to the poet read “Emerald City Sequence as The Forgotten Color Blue”

Millennial God Devours His Fathers and Stares into the Mirror
—Titanomachy

i aint nobody to stain windows with,
i break the glass and revel in the light
it welcomes. in the bereavement of the old
gods of the patriarchy here i am. fat black god

of the ghastly. callous and bloodthirsty
offerings devoured what world stood before me.
even in my gentle rage i was murderous.
an intemperate beast, at least in how

i commanded space. every day I make amends
on behalf of the pantheon of boyhood
in the mirror. i said to myself i want children
and believed it enough to desire myself.

pushed them out from the nuummite in my hip.
limp in my mouth is my litany. i want a new lineage
for lesser gods before me. a heaven of slide & whatever
their hearts desire. my children the decay of this

ancient world’s spine will bloom the new.
won’t have to electrify burial grounds to soothe

the gravel in their mouths. here dead black boys
ain’t dead black boys. or boys. or dead.

i was born a laborious dancing thing and i am that. i am
now the father to my own dismay. my hunger is my genesis

Listen to the poet read “Millennial God Devours His Fathers and Stares into the Mirror—Titanomachy”

Jo’Van O’Neal is a Black poet, content creator, and teaching artist currently based in Savannah, Georgia. He is a fellow of The Watering Hole and a Hurston/Wright Foundation workshop Alumnus. In 2018, he was an inaugural Open Mouth Readings Writing Retreat participant. His work can be found in the Foundry Journal, Tahoma Literary Review and forthcoming in Bayou Magazine.