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selected poems
I grow flowers in my hair

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I grow flowers in my hair

Because nothing else will grow there

Amidst my bush of coils, 

Entangled with the thorns.

 

I tried before to plant tomato seeds.

I toiled the soil and lay a bed of leaves

But the seeds did not grow.

The roots would not catch.

I bore no fruit.

 

I could, I know,

Grow my fruit further below

Where they surely would sprout

But I know what becomes 

The fruit of a black woman’s womb.

 

Cut out and shut down,

They become strange fruit.

Broke-back and crooked,

They are bloodied at the root.

 

Best not plant, best not sow.

Another will reap.

 

Crowned heavy with red petals 

And sweet Argan oil,

Instead

I grow the flowers in my hair.

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