xenolith

henry 7. reneau, jr.

i am not dead , good as dead

, or dying . i was misbegotten into amerikkka against my freewill . name
me the Devil’s new cavity . i am signification in a slanged diction meant to

counter inhumane grouping : i took place in transaction . your name
, my patronymic . it binds me to a sky collapsing on top of another sky

. i am symbiosis . nothing recognizable of what i survive , my epigenetic
vestige incorporated within an igneous nation . one of the first questions

my ancestors had to answer was what to do with the abducted who died
. what i am is unextinguished ; i winged the ocean’s twilight horizon to

the gyre’s muted center of a giddy circling as infinite as a scream  . i see
everything most others will not see , the rain suspended like a sheer curtain

between me and the sun like a journal that poeticizes history’s hiss
at my back . i am my own society but for this aneurysm of contempt , says

fuck the norm in a deep bass , gunmetal-gray voice of rebellion
. i bore witness marinated to clarity , for when has have naught so visible

been so indifferently mired in[di]visible ? before the voice and the word
is the thought . between the thought and the voice is the Self : all the

colonized minds the ozone petrichor smell of rain for centuries now ; and
day by day the past destroys us . we are laborers and consumers to the

one percent , and that is not sustainable . here we are , watching a world
unravel because we have been taught that happiness is a privilege : race

, money , borders , status , and laws that splinter us in all directions . the
consequences philosophically began with a butterfly’s lift into the wind

wafting over the slave pens of west Africa , more like an ignited trauma
caught fire in the body and sieved blood to tears , or the breath exhaled

an infinity of conflict nurtured by the unraveled fabric of reality . all
failure , seemingly unfixable , writes ruin now as but marrowless souls

clothed in blood , sweat , and tears , saying : i will not comply , in the
tenor of dissent , as one .

‡‡

HENRY 7. RENEAU, JR. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience & a barb-wired conviction that prequels the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press.) His work is published in Superstition Review; TriQuarterly; Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review; Punt Volat; The Ana; and Oyster River Pages. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.