National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – Morgan Parker

Poet Morgan Parker is doing great things. We’re happy to share her work from issue 7.13 as today’s poem of the day.

If My Housemate Fucks With Me I Would Get So Real (Audition Tape Take 1)

I didn’t come here to make friends.
Buildings spit their stomachs at me
and I spit back, down the sidewalk
into a bitch’s hair. I am a forehead
careening in clouds, a dirty tree branch
brushing against the shingles
of the production room. I am
groundbreaking: two as one.
Brooding tattooed over my art.
Otherwise, black.
Can do angry, can’t do
accents. I need little coaching,
provocation. Opinionated and
Everything a man wants.
Lips and boobs camera-ready.
If I hear you’re talking shit about me
in your confessional interview,
please know
seven birds have fallen dead at my feet
right out of the sky.
I learned this right hook here
when I was only six. Bitch, please.
I’m so real my hair is going gray,
legs bruised up like tree bark,
veins of my neck as swollen as
ripe fruit, the cheeks of what is growing.