A Duplex
Yvette's shares a poem for Mental Health Awareness Month.
Another Duplex, after Jericho Brown
You make me beautiful, when you reach for me
You move me with every breezy whim
As your whims change, you heave, you’re in charge
Full of power, full of testosterone
Empty of power and testosterone
you will cower beneath, accept my strength
Where did I acquire strength to make you cower?
Between stories I hold, I reframe trauma
My trauma reframed between my stories
You will shrink; I will sculpt new memories
Resculpted memories tower and shrink you
Morning makes me see the amazon I am
I am an amazon in the morning
I reach for me; I make me beautiful.
During the pandemic my writing group began meeting via zoom. The space was important to fill up so much silence and time. We began a break off group, one for poets only. In that group, Jennifer and I along with the other women shared our poetry, but we also began to study contemporary poets: Natasha Trethewey, Layli Long Soldier, Jericho Brown, among others. We were curious students and we asked: What were these poets doing differently with form? How could they inspire us?
I didn’t study the texts as I would have in graduate school, in the ways in which I was taught: to take it all apart, lay down each word carefully on the table, inspect it, analyze its placement in a line. And then carefully understand how the full text reaches backwards to other traditions, the blues, sonnets. I was interested in creating. And so I created.
A few of the poems from this time made it into my chapbook, Between Sunsets, including Garden Duplex (after Jericho Brown). The above poem “Another Duplex” did not, but I love what I’m doing in the piece.
I needed to see this again as I am in a season of affirmations and choosing the thoughts I entertain, and releasing those other ones. Because sometimes I don’t choose wisely and as a result my mental health suffers. Follow me on IG: @yvettemuses.
