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by Aurielle Marie they called him Money & he had none. i dont even gotta tell you how funny that aint. they called him June mint or, that June, he tasted of pepper. i forget. i remember they called his hands to the front the smoke was thick & the bullets carved-- no. he had a name. i think it was dark & my mouth let out a sound & suddenly there he was. grinning over the sound of artillery & bruise-laughter. you rang? & i never asked for help but i ended up saved. anyway someone told me he died casually. like the world swallowed his noise & gave us the broth to recall him by. i laid with him & never told no one. never called him nothing but a cool blush of smoke. he asked me to gift him a way out, a name to be welcomed home inside & i couldn’t offer anything up, not even all me. anyway. someone told me he died casually. i called him up & ask is it true? he say something bout there being no war in the blues. he aint answer my question. directly after, the whole room got to smelling like pepper. like June. gun powder in a Ferguson sky. & i be damned. there aint no word to call this what it is.  Aurielle Marie is a poet, essayist, and social strategist who identifies as Black, Queer and southern. She was selected by Fatimah Asghar as the 2019 winner of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award. She is the 2019 winner of the Los Angeles Review Poetry Award, and was the 2019 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer's Retreat Writer in Residence. Aurielle's essays and poems have been featured in or are forthcoming from The Guardian, TriQuarterly, Adroit Journal, Teen Vogue, The Florida Review, VINYL, BOAAT Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Essence, Allure, and the Huffington Post. She rants about justice and bra straps on twitter: @YesAurielle. Comments are closed.
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