Brown Sugar - Poem

African American Review, Summer, 2002 by Duriel E. Harris

Brown Sugar

I dream about you:
raw sugar eyes, skin,
hair, fading in waves
of spoiled water.
Black bubbles rise
from your lips,
sit hardening,
boils on the ocean's skim.
Your body fights
itself, pulling
at the seams,
splitting, gorged to spasm,
breaking to spume and spray.
You can't swim.

I am afraid for you
even though you assure me
you can take the world's shit
and spit it out.
Sixteen, Latin, Black,
queer manchild.
I want to warn you:
you are not the first.
History parts asscheeks
like a mythic sea,
lengthening
with each thrust,
to another doorless stall
in another dark bar,
behind speaker throbs,
on musty car benches,
and in limos, in cool steam
alleys, and boulevards,
to the river current,
and the deep. It'll catch you
off guard, boy; take a limb,
a lung, your memory, your sleep.
Your memory.
Your sleep.

Duriel E. Harris, a graduate of Yale and NYU, holds her doctorate from the University of Illinois. Her manuscript DRAG has been a finalist for several first-book prizes, and her writing has most recently appeared in Step Into a World, Works & Days, nocturnes, and Fence. Currently at work on Sorna, a sound recording, she has received grants from the Cave Canem Foundation and the Chicago Bar Association. Harris is the Poetry Editor for Obsidian III, a co-founder of Black Tool Collective, and the recipient of a 2002-2003 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship.