I couldn't remember

Akiel Denkins

name today. It was buried beneath

too many other names

and black bodies

beautiful, proud, magic soft souled with time hardened hearts

not impenetrable but resilient.

Not invincible,

softer than the earth blanket tucking them in.

Not made in God's image enough

to be saved from the whip

or the noose

or the hose

or the lead

or whatever oppressant is handpicked next.

the slowest sickness

Yes, there is a monster under the bed

that is not afraid

to come out in the daytime

that is not afraid

to follow you, cling to you,

living in the space between your body and your shadow.

it needs very little

but wants everything

and has stolen so much from me:

weddings, birthday parties, road trips,

stories to tell my kids, smiling, talking,

experiencing joy.

When you check for it

it does not hide.

Enjoying it's spoils;

what it has pillaged and raped,

it grins.

And you can do nothing but sleep

and hope that it is gone when you wake.


Mental health and awareness is never fun to talk about. There's a stigma around it. I wish it wasn't this way but even I've refrained from basically ever publishing anything to do with it or talk about it. It's sounds emo and wimpy and my pride doesn't want you to know that I can be that weak. But when I'm not healthy I need to be able to tell people. And we (people, the church, society) need to be able to talk about it. And learn how to love people that are dealing with it.

Little girl (I say to you)

Little girl (I say to you) wake up!
Your dream is a dream
is a lie. It will crack

much like the arctic:

cold ships and surprised passengers,

furry voyagers fully committed, to drifting

until they bail for safer pastures

and greener grass. In the arctic

mind you.

You will notice the

click, click,

of the fan you never fixed

with the screwdriver, lost,

(it is under the magazines, dog-eared

and unread)

and that the faces are featureless

as you wake up [alone] cold, [again],

the TV too far away to warm you.

setting bones.

I see him-

your Loneliness.

I've watched him cripple you

as he does the strongest

the bravest, courageous

independent men,

kings, daughters.

I am not excluded-

I am human, as are you;

that we've learned in our hours

(late, many, special, forgettable),

that we've learned about our Human Condition.

      There is no shame in that.

But if you follow him-

your Loneliness

(and men and kings and daughters do),

know that weary legs, heavy legs
are harder to heal than broken ones.

Indian Summers and Funeral Pyres

We revisited it

again and again
just to see what it would taste like.

How could we forget?

The blood from my chewed lip,

the watermelon that wasn't quite ripe,

the time you cheated on your math test
in Mrs Reynolds class

but got away with it,

and that pesto dish we cooked for your mom

the summer before she died.

        The tastes are so short lived.

The mix of saltiness, your sister's piano recital,

and the 4th of July fireworks get confused quickly

with the time we drove until the sun rose, Thanksgiving alone,

and the bay leaves I added because the chicken was boring.

We couldn't help but take another bite

wondering if it was as good as we remembered

or maybe as good as we imagined.  

What's in my Name?

I didn't have to linger long

before he picked me up

and put me in his lap.

When he stares at me I feels small:
I am a grain of sand looking out to the Atlantic
I am a lit match shining my brightest against the Pleiades

I am a lamb lost in the grandeur of the Tetons.

He smiled.
“I have a question.”
He knows when I have questions,

He always knows when I have questions.
He knows I always have questions.

“What does my name mean?

The baby books tell me it is Greek

and websites tell me that it means healer,

but I am neither;

What's my real name? My new one?

The one you made just for me, gave me,

that says you know me,

have known me, and will know me.

The name that says you know my character,

that you created and then changed me.
I want to know it as it's called again.

“You once named a deceitful man Israel because he wrestled with you,
and a mighty nation and King rose from it.
And You changed the names of a whore's children

and intimately loved them as 'pitied' and 'my people.'
Finally you renamed a righteous and confident man 'small'

and now the world reads his letters.

Will you use me? What is my new name?
I want to know it as it's called again

because I know that you've corrected it.”

Gimp handed poem

this is whar a porm written witha splinted
left hand looks like. the fingers are denired
their natural ranfge of motion, stoppied by a piece
of metal anfd foam that looks klike a surf wave.
typos mount and patience ebbs away with the
slloth-likr process. A promise not to use
the other haand or edit seems unwise at this point.
the one hand can obly reach so many digits
and the shift button at the same time
to acapitalize at the beginning of each sentence.
the clunjky device rakes down the keyboard,
holding the ctrl key when unneeded, and stripping off
the key between x and v. that'ss the last straw
and this expriment is done.

I found this from when I had my face busted and my arm hurt from that bike wreck. I don't know why I didn't publish it, I'm fairly amused by it. -Jason