My body has a legend,
he says mid-story,
and wipes his mouth.
Then, as to recite grace,
stands at the table to prove it.
Beneath the drape of his shirt
a savanna of skin ripples slightly
For a blink, I don’t understand
what’s missing:
He had no belly button.
His stomach paved mythologically clean.
We’d been so casual
playing catch with origin stories
after class
over crepes and pancakes.
Our roll call of scars.
We’d been speaking of doctors and mistakes
when his face shifted gears,
then he landed his fork like tapping a baton.
This is how boys are.
Show and prove
Tale of the tape
People are terrified by skin
not meeting their expectations
For years, white women were forbidden
from showing their navels on TV
the networks were alarmed
over what they symbolized
how they seemed to prove something
root us together
seeing the placenta as nebula
a star-field of skin
a chandelier from which
we’re all suspended
flaring out from the same light
if men can write shame laws over belly buttons
it’s no surprise the fumbling
of a Black child
steaming new and helpless
in a cage of fingers.
a rabbit midwifed by a hawk
I know this now.
yet, how I doubted him, Lord
my sticky, maple fingers
trembled in prayer all night
Oakland native James Cagney is the author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory, winner of the 2019 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Some of his poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, The Maynard, Anvil Tongue Books, The Racket Journal and in anthologies Colossus: Home and Civil Liberties United. Visit Nomadicpress.org for his book, and TheDirtyRat.blog for more writing.
