Len Lawson
Len Lawson is the author of Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019) and co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Weymouth Center for the Arts, and others. His poetry appears in Callaloo, African American Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Len is also a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, earning the 2020 IUP Outstanding Doctoral Student Award. He has taught English in South Carolina higher education for ten years. Visit Len at lenlawson.co
Happy Poem
Lawd I feel good today I’m Ice Cube Today Was a
Good Day Steadymobbing today I’m Outkast So Fresh
So Clean today I got me a woman and she tells me I’m
her world best thing since sliced bread I’m the loaf today
I feel like a million
man march in my soul today because everything is
gonna be a’ight be tight & outta sight gimme five on the
black hand side can’t nobody hold me down except
this honey-colored honey by my side today I’m feeling
Freebird today and every plane with a band will land as
planned I’m high ho hi ho to wherever I wanna
go zippity doo da and chim chim cheree I’m lifted
I’m gone and I ain’t coming back without a diamond toe tag
Excuse me, do you ever write any happy poems Why yes
white lady ma’am I do and this one’s for you too To-day
means I’m headed eyes wide into the sun or an eclipse
[yeah but If We Must Die] No not today Today we shine
like gold dollar pieces for eyes Today we smelt gold
teeth into our veins Every noose around a neck is
now a dookie chain halo Excuse me, will your poems
ever be happy Ain’t you been listening I am
happy I’m Pharrell Happy happy dancing
in the street happy I’m walking on sunshine shining
I’m Stevie Wonder Isn’t She Lovely Happy Birthday song happy
I’m Happy Gilmore get in your hole happy I’m so
happy [it won’t last] I ain’t going nowhere not even
into tomorrow
Ars Poetica
I race
to the same
empty wells
shoving my
face into dry
prized orifices
looking for
my reflection
while the mirror
in my flesh
screams back to
my own well
echoing I am
already filled
with the water
I seek
Dark Arts
When it comes to this poetry
I ain’t shit
You better figure that out
before these black swamp
backwater words
asphyxiate your lungs
before these noose-filled phrases
dangle you like carbon monoxide
holding a suburban home hostage
Why does everything sublime after
taste like a chemical burn
Pour rubbing alcohol through
the nose and breathe
like an exorcism
I’m trying to say
don’t trust me
I’m sifting through
the cabinet of my vocabulary
for the cyanide
but it’s oozing out more
like castor oil
God, did I hate that shit
Mama asphyxiated
my esophagus with it
like tar through a catheter
I smelled nothing but
poverty and ashes for days
yet my nasal membranes glowed
like my face after Mama prayed
over the grease to slay
my ashy black skin into gold
I’m trying to glow again
to flood my senses thick
with copious translucence
to boa-constrict your half-life
with a mellifluous chokehold
Mama I’m praying
just like you
for that black magic
from above