I got to study-- yeah, my uncle's a soy.
I got to study at UC Riverside with Fred
Moten for a little bit.
And he's a really amazing and brilliant teacher.
And so there's a paragraph from him.
This is La Mera Neta.
What is nothingness?
What is thingli-ness?
What is blackness?
Can there be an aesthetic sociology or a social poetics
of nothingness?
I tell my children la mera neta, the real deal about envy,
that mean-eyed home girl never sleeps.
Her long red nails break across dark alley schools.
For real, don't give her a Teddy bear Valentine.
She'll make you the memory on a snow white sidewalk,
mylar candle flickering, another boy taken by a gun.
She'll chase you because your tattoos are new,
because hers are fading.
She sees county welfare in dirty tones, violet lips,
and wine dark corn.
She burns crepuscular food stamps.
She might pox your happy bunk bed,
cover the ladder in shattered green glass
that digs into your palms.
But envy is teaching without a class,
and I am her accomplice hiding a taste from metallic learning,
hiding behind books and teachers petting.
Our leashes become real when we believe in them.
We are fighting the wrong people.
What makes us pretty is our taste for fire.
We're self-made novas for starting over.
Broken mirrors ground to glitter.
She is nothing, people say, and step over her,
but nothing is something misunderstood.
Homegirls holding hands, black acrylic sparkle.
We sit with danger.
The one we make, not the one we are told to fear.