American Sonnet by Wanda Coleman

rejection can kill you

it can force you to park outside neon-lit liquor stores and finger the steel of your contemplation. it can even make you rob yourself

(when does the veteran of one war fail to appreciate the vet of another?)

the ragged scarecrow lusts in the midst of a fallow field and the lover who prances in circles envies me my moves/has designs on my gizzard/kicks shit

this is the city we've come to all the lights are red all the poets are dead and there are no norths

— Aloud: voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe by Miguel Algarín, Bob Holman (Page 190)