Jayshawn Lee
Jayshawn Lee is a Senior at New York University, where his academic focus is on the political economy of global equity. He has also led several readings and events centered around poetry at NYU, including the annual Say It Loud event, which uplifts arts and activism by black students on campus.
Lee received his A.A. in 2019 from the Borough of Manhattan Community College in Writing and Literature. There he was the two-time recipient of the James Tolan Writing Award for Poetry. He spends much of his time working alongside various organizations and institutions in NYC, ranging from city council offices to non-profits, including his own writing centered group Write-Up. Lee completed his Master’s in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University and currently serves as the Advocacy Chair of the of the Emerging Leaders Advisory Board at Human Rights First.
Punch Drunk
by Jayshawn Lee
what valleys cannot reach, the mountains sit ever & in memory, I see them in my mother’s new
hands-- eroded flesh. No living cell that has
horrored me less than boy awaits me in reach. Those fists
have visited my youth so many times. My young body, toured and landmarked by its abusive love
Mosquito-back summers & a palm’s
murderous reach ends my bodies drinking-- a bug
dies, & lonelies a boy who thirsts of a dehydrated home of
hands, or a mother who doesn’t introduce you to her angst in head
blows. My body-- bloody once a week, even daily, wounded by
nature. Do not show me gentle gestures, I beg!
I forget the difference between loving hands and swinging
ones. I cannot tell apart passion and pain the both are born
between hand strokes and foreheads. There is something
frightful about skin coming close. & Don’t all virgins get nervous
the first time they make love? I am still waiting for hands looking
to orgasm & not obstruct me for the first time besides my own.
When lovers autopilot my waist & do
with those hands, I never thought possible
I will beg them-- monet my neck portrait, gentle it purple,
give to me in ways that do not garner this garden ruined
but a place summer vampires and lovers find ecosystem by mouth.
I will not flinch, those mount rushmore knuckles vacation my jaw
& each time I’ll ask for the bruises by hands that did not birth me.
Are We Really Made of Dust–– Mother?
i.
I see your uncouth galaxy, freckles as proof
that we too carry light in close proximity to ourselves.
A nose like an Orion bridge belts me too. I could jump, and
find out what it's actually like to be a star,
but how ironic to fall into the sky
despite gravity's pull on us, holding on like a firm
hand. Does it let go after the burial?
Does it release once we’ve submitted to the flames
& become dust again?
ii.
I’ll send a letter to see how
laws become myth.
Was Newton a liar? Or did
the rules just get addressed wrong––Mother?
Rumor has it heaven is somewhere
between space and the clouds.
If all dogs go to heaven
why can’t we hear barking from airplanes––Mother?
Must be the turbulence––Mother
iii.
Mother–– look at us with building blocks of life like
pieces of anatomy or heavenly bodies. Sometimes,
I can hardly tell apart the names:
penumbra, solar plexus, ascending aorta, coronal loops
together, a body like far-off scatterplots of glimmer
disconnected. Family by quaint causation not correlation.
Is that why my last name is not yours or my father’s?
I mean, I get it. Pluto was too posh for his family to carry the name planet.
iv.
Stars bled light until you were birthed a leo
at least now we know where I got my mane
I get it. Raising
a boy while adolescent will stretch
the flesh of both
the lion and tamer.
v.
Constellations formed in the womb aligned by my feet whomping to wound
womb with wretched regulators gone awry named contractions.
vi.
I guess we have a lot in common with the stars.
Just look at us, constellations under eyes,
space cheeked, dotted up but not hollowed.
They shoot across my face,
like sunspots and all.
Everything but the bullets
just their ability to scar.
vii.
Mother––
& like gravity governs gradually
we both are pulled closer to the ground.
To be both the milky way and the soil
from one of its planets
How arrogant of our living–– mother.