two poems

by Akhim Yuseff Cabey

This Here Green Tea

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.

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.