Shakeema Smalls

Morning Conjure 1

This is the morning I scrub my floors.
After uncounted days, crossed paths
pinesol in my mop water,
my supplication the week
or lifetime
I have some money in my pockets
hallowed be thy name. 

All manner of Psalms
and welfare lines 
and 7:45 evening Pick 4
on that dream about black dogs 
and a house razed to flint. 

Spiderwebs above my headboard
in a corner, kaleidoscope dreamcatchers
standing water on my night table, make it
so that I can’t discern between waking
or working.

Evening Conjure 3

In the house of my mother, long abandoned
born in love, no matter how much 
the devil tried to use me
I was born on the day Chairman Fred died.

Born in bitterness as medicine
braying and wrecking in all the tenderness 
of hope garden projects and double-wide trailers 
because I was born into class.

This day, the elders carried their guns 
straight away, excepting 
they had already shed blood 
on the day of my coming and, as such, 
I have, since forever, sought to be 
born again.

Shakeema Smalls is from Georgetown, South Carolina. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets including Blackberry: A Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, The Fem, The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Radius Lit, Free Black Space, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, and Rigorous, among others. She was a Tin House 2022 Winter Workshop participant and is a PEN America 2022 Emerging Voices Fellow.