My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 10

Isis searched and searched for reciprocity
Dreamed it’d been attained before
Committed to her memory
Assured it was hers to find
Darkness an outlet
Light a small shadow
When a walk of ire becomes what is known
A mask fractured by cold independence
Boldness is the sole remedy
This new language, strangely palatal
Every word a rendition
Unmistaken like the scent of sea
Permeating her skin
This is a crucial thing
That one cannot live without the threads of dignity
That one cannot live without acceptance
That one cannot live without a sun to guide
Ekphrasis was her name
She was the child of an open song
That carried its melody from disparate shores
And buried its rhythm in the hot-touch sand

9

Never in a straight line
Isis continued to wander into night
Crossing from one field to the next
Making her way to the outer edge
When the fruit of the tree falls to earth
Something is there to meet it
Darkened by the shade above
It follows its own path downward

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

The skylark trills into morning light
And they know this sound can bring them back
They know this call will follow them
Sparse like a calling, by its own accord
Flushed at the intersection of turquoise
Birds dive into a fresh-cut horizon
Her throat swells with clouds of salt
Was this the way his ancestors lived?
Memory entombed within
Geography was never the exemption