kameryn alexa carter
Recto/
I was once a sketch
or the thought of a sketch
before I was a body
in a cream leather coat
almost as supple as my skin
and sunglasses that insectified me
I was a painting on frail parchment:
an infant messiah roosted
on the lap of a woman who was
bred by an angel with ten eyes
and surrounded by bleeding
pomegranates
A photo negative,
blue-blurred.
intaglio:
masking in the airport,
sneaking strawberries undercover.
And yet I felt being seen
was most imperative.
In the slant shadow:
Fasten, hasten—
Through milk glass,
A Subterranean terror.
I felt myself being seen,
Petrified.
Verso
Petrified,
I felt myself being seen,
a subterranean terror.
Through milk glass,
fasten, hasten—
In the slant shadow:
Most imperative was being seen.
Sneaking strawberries undercover,
Masking in the airport,
A backwards intaglio,
Blue-blurred
photo negative:
Pomegranates bleeding
and surrounded by angels with ten eyes,
A woman who was bred
Her infant messiah roosted on her lap.
I was a painting on frail parchment:
Sunglasses that insectified me,
A cream leather coat
Almost as supple as my skin—
Before I was a body,
Or the thought of a sketch
I was once a sketch.
Kameryn Alexa Carter is a black poet and the editor of Emergent Literary, an online journal for the work of black and brown artists. Her work has appeared in Bennington Review, Torch Literary Arts, Portable Gray, and elsewhere. She is the author of Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh and Antediluvian: Poems. She is currently completing her M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Michigan.