Ode to jay-z, ending in the rattle of a fiend’s teeth

teach us how to hustle so / hard that they / never come for our daughters and / feast upon their dancing limbs or / the thick tangles of hair swarming / over their dark eyes / have we prayed at your feet / long enough for them to keep / what they came here with / after they are entombed in / the dirt / this is what is happening / in our America right now / another black girl was emptied / in Brooklyn last night and / I watch this on the news / in Ohio and weep / even though I know that it is not / my mother / because the girl on TV has / no name other than gone / and my mother held on to / her name until her body / became ash / until she was a mountain of white / powder / that’s that shit / we take razor blades to / and drown / the whole hood in / that shit that got us out / the projects / and left whole families / of men / starved and longing / is this what becomes / of the women we love / consumed even in death by / a flock of men / who have mistaken their grief / for a persistent hunger / that comes again each / sweat soaked morning with / a new set of forgotten names / overflowing in its arms / after coming down from / the cross / how did you fix your hands / to hold a child without / covering her in decades / of blood / and have you taught her / to run yet / not the way we run / into the arms of a lover / but the way you ran / before the first gold record hung / in a home far enough away / from the block / you finally stopped / hearing the clatter of ravening jaws / clashing together at sunset / we still hear it out here / it gets louder with each / black girl hollowed out / and erased / if you can’t feed them into silence / again / can you at least rap for us / over all this noise / everyone I love has had / the hardest time / sleeping.