POETRY

Moynihan Dreams of the Black Life’s Lack

By Leslie McIntosh     VOLUME 53.3

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The Lack is vibrant. It saves seats for its whole family, right in the middle of the theater hall.
            The Lack manspreads. It fills its Tupperware in the buffet line, and it knows no one will
say shit.
            It’s paid dues in used tampons,
in discarded wifebeaters.                       Lack is laundromat rich.
Lack bought a street of rowhouses with bad credit.                       The food inside is magical in nature.
                                    There are clouds that never cross those roofs.
The dogs of Lack have tongues that vent more than heat—they curse, they oral sex, they clap with stressful
                        sugar.            Only the gerund will due for their hunger.
Lack cooks for church religiously,
is a community resource.
                        Its fashions are ripe
                                                                        and attainable                        but fast
                                                                                         to the garbage.
Its bills are too high, it has graves between its toes. Its children spread on the wind like a spider’s,
                                                                  catching onto clothing and hairdos and windowsills.
                                                         They aren’t picky but talk greasy in the periphery.
                                                                  Those portals will never again close right.
Lack, alone, is old,
 sits facing one of its many furnaces.                             It has a shawl wrapped around,
                                                                                                always cold.
It feeds the fabric to the flames. Smoke tentacles through the chimney,
                          tightens its finger around
                                                    an afternoon sky,
                                                                              then, lets it go.

 


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LESLIE MCINTOSH has received support, in the form of fellowships and residencies, from the Furious Flower Poetry Center, Callaloo, and The Watering Hole. He was the 2nd place finalist in Split This Rock’s 2019 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest, judged by Franny Choi. His poems have been published in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and the Quarry. He lives in Jersey City, NJ.


VOLUME 53.3