Freak

This is an expert from “sUNDAY sCHOOL: The B.Riche Gospel.” Want more? Donations accepted via tithe.

Flip for them, sister.

Show them your belly.

Trust their flowers—
roots ripped ripe
not worth a lick

stiff,
steeped in their own soils.

Now teeth, baby.

Show the gaps.
And the gold.

Show the second row, too.

Pull the lip
and say what you like
to be called.

You’re a freak.

Riding yourself up
the flagpole—
for the oohs,
for the ooze,

for the fuse.

While they muscle down
the broad who rode before you,
who dripped into
gaped mouths

and let them swallow
her whole.

Be a freak, baby.

They’re the ones who
buy your beans,
who keep snipped clips
dripping in sour grapes,
grass greener,
eyes rimmed rose.

Now spin, pretty.
Do us a trick.

Stay up as long you can.
Make them hold the breath.

Drown in power
while you’ve no weight
nor wear.
Where it’s only you
and no one to tell you
when you should head down.

Now steady smolder
for your fall
where color cools

and sound warms—
to real.

Where they cookie-cut
cover shots
and say you’re you,
but you from before,
who was actually her
with a little bit of she.

Freaks.

But backstage—
the mirrors only refract
all your reflection,
all your reflections,
between you and all the other yous

who lassoed limelight,
who rode the pole.

But now there is a new line
to toe,
to read, stand in,
wait on, cross,
to tie up, knot

for those who flick eyes,
crank necks,
break glass,

to glimpse freak baked
fresh that morning,

before you already
spent your fill.

A line full of
pulls of taffy families now
and blind wailers
waiting you wilt,

begging you make room
for the new one
with the eye in the middle

and the neck that turns
to today’s snap of sin

who can stay up for longer
and keep eyes

and hold breath.

The freak

who sent herself
up the flagpoles
just to say

she could.