90 poems I didn’t write for you for Jasmine Richards

In the long tradition of black women protecting and honoring black women, Jasmine Richards, a Black Lives Matter organizer in Pasadena California, was part of a group of activists who intervened in the arrest of a participant in a peace March in Pintroesca Park in Pasadena on August 29^th 2015. In a move designed to attack the Black Lives Matter Movement and to disrupt their work in Pasadena, Jasmine was arrested and charged with “felony lynching” a California law against taking a person out of police custody which carries a sentence of up to 4 years in prison. This summer after Jasmine began serving the 90 days she was sentenced to, I wrote (or didn’t write) the following poems as part of a project to send messages of love to Jasmine in prison. I sent the poem in the morning and later in the day I learned Jasmine was released from prison. This poem is for Jasmine’s freedom and for #blackgirlactivism, long may we love each other, remember each other and free the world.

the one where every butch i’ve ever loved doesn’t have to live in the prison of other people’s fearsthe one in the forgotten African language where we could have said exactly what we meantthe acrostic one where I spell your name like justice always seems more invisible now everywherethe one that is really a plagiarized poem by june jordan for angela davis with the dates changedthe one that’s a carefully curated list of your awesome t-shirtsthe one where i imagine that you are just like methe one where i admit we are completely differentthe one where i interview your friends about you and give them back the poem so they can crythe short one we can stand outside the gates and scream

the quiet one where I pray that you are safethe one that Medusa could very easily sample for a hip hop songthe one where i compare you to all the birds, first hawk, then raven, thencanary, then crow and finally phoenix for the ways you growthe one shaped like a cake with a secret saw baked inthe one where i kick the guards in the face and you run to freedomthe one where we sing your name so loud that the walls fall downthe one where you find a portal in there and walk through it to chill withAssata in Cuba and walk back out 90 days later with a tanthe one that makes sure you never feel alonethe one about your sneakers the one that anticipates the report you publish after you come home abouthow they cage us to make the sun forget us, how they envy our melanin like trollsthe palindrome the same forwards and backwards home home coming coming home homethe one that shames the judge and the legislatorsthe one that makes the people feel invinciblethe one that makes your mom and aunties feel like i must have known youbefore they strung your name up in headlinesthe one that accidentally makes your girlfriend jealous even though i don’t know you like thatthe femme poem that is soft enough to help you sleepthe hard femme poem that grows your muscles from the insidethe one with so much bravado it breaks your heart

the one with that breathtaking last line that you get as a tattoothe one that references decades of west coast rhymesthe one that everyone reposts and then forgets once the next hit comesthe one that gets everything wrong about you except my needthe one that i already wrote for you years ago because i knew this wouldhappen i just thought it would be methe one that i think you would write if you were in the mood to write poems right nowthe one about you when you were a brave little kid and nobody could...