by Akhim Yuseff Cabey
This Here Green Tea
I
we sit at this café.
it’s raining
outside. a saturated day.
he had pretty pink hands
soft as any girl’s, you say
and I wanted him so
I once jumped
off his roof
into an inflatable pool.
II
I look out the window—
a white SUV
streaks by
splashing a violent curtain
against the beaten curb
of this Midwestern city—and sigh
a dreadful frisson
of momentary luxury.
III
I remember not a roof
but a failed upstate
New York farmer’s
daughter’s sturdy-ass hips.
she wanted to mold me—
and to unify Ireland
before twenty-one. my
head fills with water
and the image
of your light-skinned
shattered ankle. I reach
for the grips of your voice:
drink this here green tea.
My Name is Edward
I told a white boy at Cub Scout camp
my name was Edward—of all names—
because I didn’t want him to be afraid
and so he would like me. I cannot now
remember his face—
Akhim Yuseff Cabey is a Pushcart Prize-winning Black author whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Indiana Review, the minnesota review, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, Passages North, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. A six-time recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, he is originally from the Bronx, New York, and now lives in Columbus, Ohio.