poetry by kelsey l. smoot

cousins

Growing up Black,
with roots in the South,
means…you ‘got a lot of cousins.

· There’s the favorite cousin,
who always felt more like a big brother

· The bougie cousins
who always got on that new shit

· The hood cousins
 who taught you how to fight

· The good cousins
who went to college on scholarship

And the play cousins.
Perhaps the most important category:
Your daddy's best friend’s daughter
Your homeboy from around the way
that taught you everything you needed to know in this life.
Black folks know to draw the family tree so big, and wide,
that it has room enough
to encompass anybody that you’ve ever loved.

So, when you ask me how I can care so much,
‘bout someone I don’t share blood with,
someone who doesn’t share my last name,
the answer is simple:

that’s my cousin.

And you might be my play-cousin,
but I don’t play about you.

I’ll call out your name,
but it’s been a while,
so check me if I mispronounce it.

¡Viva Viva Tortuguita!
Viva la revolución!

Viva whatever it is
that will keep the air
in my lungs, and yours.

Pull over in Williamsburg, Virginia

for a brown man
on the side of the highway—
his weary thumb outstretched.
Disregard anything I’ve ever been told

about the danger of men
who look like me.

Same fire, raining on Gaza,
been ringin’ off on the east side.
ringin’ in my ears

ever since I was a kid
and learned that sirens

didn’t mean that help was on the way.
Same fruit, swingin’ strange like
loquats, and lush ivy brush.

“Why did you stop for me?” asks Waj
“We gotta stick together,” I say.

I don’t care from where

you got your brown skin.
We stickin’ like brown mud;
like fistfuls of Black cake.
We stickin’ like we been stuck,
like we don’t know no better.
Like we got the same short end of the stick
but we can hold them together.
Like, we in this for the long haul
so pack up all your shit

like I pulled up in the U-Haul—
like “hop in loser,
we finna get free today!”

Y’all tweaked if y’all think
my ancestors’ wildest dream
 was for me to be able to vote
for genocide
keep ignoring homicide
Trans-femicide
I’m not an activist
I’m just Black and tired,
so I act like this.
I’m really like this.

I promise you,
I would stop for you too—
wallahi.

If they take the Weelaunee,
I promise you:
I will bear witness,
I will not look away,
There is no tomorrow

that I will accept,
that doesn’t have you in it.

 I will keep your dreams,
hold your hands,
read your poems,
shed tears for you like,

you my little kinfolk
Like “Yeah,

you can call me your cousin,
cousin.”
From the river to the sea.