Jaywalking with Othello

You dumb bastard. What would your momma say?
Moors can’t jaywalk in KKK county.
Why’d you do it, champ?       Love? You’re shitting me.
Don’t pull that green-eyed monster shit with me—
I know your game. You’re never satisfied.
Always soliloquizing starved women
with Nubian smiles, sandalwood words
oozing swagger trails, smooth as silk rain.
But you fucked up this time. A white woman!

Naw, not tryna hear a passion-dappled speech
backed with Blues and typewriter cardinals.
Have you seen West Side Story, my Moor?
Your folk can’t go trouncing through the Beltway
crow-skinned, Air-Jordaned, drenched in SheaMoisture
calling for Pearls, Roses, and Tiffanys.
Doesn’t matter how many passed dangers
she pitied, you know you’ll get killed for this.

Alright, alright—no need for waterworks.
You sure about this girl?          Whew. That’s deep, bro.
Okay fine, but you know I’ll worry.  
Wait a second. Can you still overact?
I may have a plan. Here, take this hankie.
It’s simple: be who they want you to be.
Fake a jungle temper. I’ll do the rest.
Soon, you’ll be sniffing Buenos Aires hues.
Squinting at colors you pretend aren’t there. 

I Miss Your Stories

Ne Ne, my memories
are the dusty bike under your porch
—rusty,|
no training wheels.
Did you say I was six?
You must’ve known I’d bust my ass,
Penny jar head shattering on the asphalt.
How’d it go again?

Tell me about that time
you lost your class.
Took a box cutter to that man’s forehead—
carved your initials,
no questions asked.
Ends with the pearl-handled pistol—
the crooked cop you almost shot.
What did he call you?

Ne Ne, just like your best Sunday dress,
You are starting to fade.
Eternally put away in the closet—
black, splashed with mushroom beige,
after baby me upchucked the applesauce.
grainy, powdered hurl
all over those pearls.
Did I ever apologize?

I want to hear the one with my aunts.
Nappy-haired runaways
didn’t get past the liquor store.
You must have been mad.
Angry as a defamed boxer
squeezing the tattered belt for all its worth.
Auntie doesn’t tell it like you.

Your voice turns to murmurs
down a tunnel.
Like the time your sister tricked you
down the water-encircled underpass.
Closed in while the sea sat on top.
Cadillacs shouldn’t turn to submarines.
Get me.the hell.
out of here.
you said.
Cruising beneath that Houston harbor.
Or was it Kemah?

Got any new jokes?
The old one’s punchlines
land limp-fisted—
swollen soft.
Not the same.

No more cracking up in your backseat—
as we fly down the road with Ben E. King
singing how Supernatural we are.
No more dominoes
on that shabby fold-out table.
No more memories
of my Ne Ne telling me—
telling me.

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Classics)

White men have been having awkward sex in poetry
since the sonnet was learning its ABCs.
Sorry, Longfellow, but I’d rather be desired
in Langston’s naked room than coldly coitused
by your round-towered dungeoned heart.

Oh Langston, that spit-matted dog.
He’s giving me a lightskin stare now
from the hands of a poet across the coffee shop.
His biographer can’t decide if he was gay or asexual,
but right now, his ass-eating grin and Euphrates-deep
irises are sending clear intentions.

Typewriter hammers slick on a black belt,
slapping tongue prints on my neck—
C . . O . . M . . E . . H . . E . . R . . E . .

Martheaus Perkins is a Black writer pursuing an MFA at George Mason. His work appears in West Trade Review, PRISM, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere. He is currently dealing with an excessively long YouTube video obsession. His Instagram is @martheaus.