All the pretty girls.
Parsley, sage, salt, glue.
And you’re a big help to him
says my husband’s father
when I share his news of promotion.
Hey, hey, buckle my shoe,
No sing me a new song mama
says my son before bed.
All the pretty girls.
No another song.
Lost my partner what’ll I do,
lost my partner what’ll I do.
Skip to my lou my darling.
No a new song.
Hey little girl is your daddy home
did he go and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire.
Where am I going with this
I’m thinking while he watches
his pillow to picture the words.
All the pretty girls.
He fucked the shit out of her explained
my father about the plot of a movie.
The pretty girls.
Dad do you have to say that to me?
Mama another one. Mama a new one.
Well I’m sorry but that’s what he did.
You’re a big help to him.
All the pretty girls.

Taije Silverman

Don’t you know your Latin said the poet who wanted to kiss me
repeating cupio dissolvi until I wrote the words down

on a placemat. He was taking me out again for dinner.
He was telling me every small thing I should hear. Grinzosa

means wrinkled; beltá is like beauty but no longer used.
You weren’t here, he wasn’t you, what’s my crime, come on.

It means love for the end is what he tried to explain, but saying
I had to drink more wine because he wanted to.

Eliot called Pound the better locksmith in Italian
although a poet loves inloveness more than any iron gate.

Today’s the Day of the Immaculate Conception and so
the locksmith shops aren’t open. I had to call a number listed

under SOS after locking myself out of my apartment and when
the locksmith learned that I’d come from the city of Rocky Balboa,

he agreed to stay for a cup of coffee. Cupio means wish
but also yearn for and hunger, to covet, to crave and to need.

What’s the difference, I asked the poet, between love
for the end and for pretty young bodies-good question, he said

and he puzzled like a stoplight, but there is one, there is one, there is.
I wanted him to want to kiss me too. The locksmith is a widower.

He never thought his wife would die, not once
in forty years, he said-it just wasn’t a thought he ever had.

We agreed at our stupidity but in his eyes was loneliness I didn’t want
to recognize; I know he’d feel the same and didn’t blame me.

I want to ask the poet what’s the difference between beauty
and a beauty that’s no longer used, or the difference

between death and to dissolve. These aren’t the kinds of questions
I would ask you. Husband, you’re the absence of longing.

And I promise I’ll grow old and die. And I promise I’ll give you my life.

Taije Silverman

I want a story to keep me company while my husband
stares into his phone, beside me in bed. Any story.
That a man named Solon planned the whole city of Athens
while in love with his mother’s friend’s son. He broke his hand

trying to catch a turtle on the roof of a temple
is what I want to be told while my husband plays scrabble
against any number of people he hasn’t seen in years.
Exist for forty points links to stop for twenty-five which

he drops into tranq for its q worth at least half the house.
Slang for a person or thing that will act as a sedative.
Tonight after three episodes of a show about Russian spies
with perfect American accents, I ask if he like peanuts

and he says he loves peanuts, and it’s as if we’ve just met
and are fools for each other, still make out on sidewalks at dawn.
Plutarch recounted the life of Solon “at a time when history
was by no means an academic discipline” wrote someone

on Wikipedia, while Solon wrote a law forbidding slaves
from being gymnasts because his mother’s friend’s son
was a gymnast and a slave and because he didn’t
fall in love with Solon back. “It is irrational to renounce

what we want for fear of losing it,” wrote Plutarch.
His eyes in a duel with the screen of his phone, my husband asks
what dentist I’ll see tomorrow, and two minutes later:
Did I remember to turn down the heat. Academic, irrational,

exist for thirty-two, tranq for a house with central heating.
Tell me the one about the peanut that choked Plutarch,
tell me about the backflipping slave. Solon invented the euphemism.
Prisons as chambers, policemen as guards. I love you,

I’ve said, enough times to make history, or join it, and I mean it,
did you turn down the heat. Let’s be civilized, said Solon.
And: No man is allowed to sell his daughter unless she’s not a virgin.
He made a law forbidding unions that defeat the object of marriage,

but the object of marriage was an acrophobic turtle at a time
by no means known for steep temple roofs. Four days from now
I’m brushing my teeth when my husband says, I don’t feel
any love from you at all. Solon would answer this usefully.

He made a law stating that immediately upon marriage,
bride and bridegroom should be locked in a chamber to eat a quince.
Or if not immediately, then four days from now. Count no one happy
until he’s dead, said Solon, to the happiest person alive.

Taije Silverman

The boy at my poetry reading wants to start a reliquary.
He might be twelve, his belly billowing like a safety
net for his body and his thick, curly hair the color
of Tang. His shoulders have the breadth and weight
of a kitchen cupboard but his voice is a child’s,
girlish and mannered. His name is River.

He tells me the bolt he found along the bank of a river
will be the first official piece of his reliquary.
Meaningful objects are hard to come by, he says with a child’s
comic gravity, but I’ve got this bolt. Lifesaver-
shaped erasers line the shop counter behind him beside paperweights
of Paris. In the Q&A his cheeks prick a muddled rum color

each time he asks a question, like What’s your favorite color?
and Do you believe in numerology? His mother scolds, River!
when he asks my deepest fear, but he waits
for my answer. I want to ask how he knows what a reliquary
is. I want to know what the bolt looks like, if it’s right now safe
in his pocket and if the sign it held warned CHILDREN

CROSSING or WIND GUSTS. A child’s
deepest fear is not of danger but of loss, though of loss that doesn’t color
what comes after. Absence without aftermath. He’s so intent on saving
what surrounds him that who he’ll be without it must seem, to River,
as abstract as old age—a minor evil that the simplest of reliquaries
could overcome. I want to hold the bolt’s small, solid weight

in my hand, hold its useless intention, but people are waiting
to buy my book and tell me how when they were children
they also lost their mothers, as if inside reliquaries
we keep grief, and not the rose-scented and colorless
bones of saints. As if grief could carry us like rocks across a river,
embedded in sediment so we might safely

walk above water. But grief is the water. I have saved
messages from answering machines and a nearly weightless
shred of cork, several post-it notes, and a petal from a river
of curbside cherry blossoms that my father scooped like a child
with both hands to let fly in front of my mother. Moth-colored
powerless petal. And then-isn’t a book also a reliquary?

River waits in line to ask what he should put in his reliquary.
Instead of signing my name I list: a used eraser, a child’s watercolor,
and a page from your diary saying you haven’t lost anything,
you’re safe.

Taije Silverman

Mama, my son moans when he dreams again that I’m gone.
His hand on my finger curves into a lock when I stand.

I remember my mother’s shape in the darkness
like a pattern, sew it to the quilt, dip the stitch, pull.

Not her smell nor her actual voice when she said she was leaving. Long ago rustle of now.

And he’s sleeping the whole lit known night long,
my fur-feather baby, lobe and lung,
You know I can’t stay, you know

I’ll be here forever. It was a dream is what I say
when he tells me I left and that the house
became bigger and trapped him inside his room.

Nameless rainmaker, pattern of drops, and all we remember
the story we tell of it after.

The dead in the ground are the dark good shapes,
here by the bed to stay just a little while longer.
His warm one lock of a hand.

Hold harder, oh pure constellation.

How do we die, my son asks one night without context while we’re choosing his five bedtime books.

Taije Silverman

when it come back around
The purpose is in the lessons we learnin’ now
Sacrifice personal gain over everything
Just to see the next generation better than ours
I wasn’t perfect, the skin I was in had truly suffered
Temptation, impatience, everything that the body nurtures
I felt the good, I felt the bad, and I felt the worry
But all-in-all, my productivity had stayed urgent
Face your fears, always knew that I would make it here
Where the energy is magnified and persevered
Consciousness is synchronized and crystal-clear
Euphoria is glorified and made His
Reflectin’ on my life and what I’ve done
Paid dues, made rules, change outta love
Them same views made schools change curriculums
But didn’t change me starin’ down the barrel of the gun
Should I feel resentful I didn’t see my full potential?
Should I feel regret about the good that I was into?
Everything is everything, this ain’t coincidental
I woke up that morning with more heart to give you
As I bleed through the speakers, feel my presence
To my brother, to my kids, I’m in Heaven
To my mother, to my sis’, I’m in Heaven
To my father, to my wife, I am serious, this is Heaven
To my friends, make sure you countin’ them blessings
To my fans, make sure you make them investments
And to the killer that sped up my demise
I forgive you, just know your soul’s in question
I seen the pain in your pupil when that trigger had squeezed
And though you did me gruesome, I was surely relieved
I completed my mission, wasn’t ready to leave
But fulfilled my days, my Creator was pleased
I can’t stress how I love y’all
I don’t need to be in flesh just to hug y’all
The memories recollect just because y’all
Celebrate me with respect
The unity we protect is above all
And Sam, I’ll be watchin’ over you
Make sure my kids watch all my interviews
Make sure you live out our dreams we produced
Keep that genius in your brain on the move
And to my neighborhood, let the good prevail
Make sure them babies and the leaders outta jail
Look for salvation when troubles get real
’Cause you can’t help the world until you help yourself
And I can’t blame the hood the day that I was killed
Y’all had to see it, that’s the only way to feel
And though my physical won’t reap the benefits
The energy that carry on emits still
I want you

Kendrick Lamar (Excerpt from “The Heart Part 5”)

The day I chose humanity over religion
The family got closer, it was all forgiven
I said them F-bombs, I ain’t know any better
Mistakenly, I ain’t think that you’d know any different
See, I was taught words was nothing more than a sound
If ever they was pronounced without any intentions
The very second you challenged the shit I was kicking
Reminded me about a show I did out the city
That time I brung a fan on stage to rap
But disapproved the word that she couldn’t say with me
You said, “Kendrick, ain’t no room for contradiction
To truly understand love, switch position
’Faggot, faggot, faggot,’ we can say it together
But only if you let a white girl say ‘Nigga’”

Kendrick Lamar (Excerpt from “Auntie Diaries”)

Egotistic, zero-given fucks and to be specific
Need assistance with the way I was brought up
What’s the difference when your heart is made of stone
And your mind is made of gold
And your tongue is made of sword, but it may weaken your soul?
My niggas ain’t got no daddy, grow up overcompensatin’
Learn shit ’bout bein’ a man and disguise it as bein’ gangsta
I love my father for tellin’ me to take off the gloves
’Cause everything he didn’t want was everything I was
And to my partners that figured it out without a father
I salute you, may your blessings be neutral to your toddlers
It’s crucial, they can’t stop us if we see the mistakes
’Til then, let’s give the women a break, grown men with daddy issues.

Kendrick Lamar (Excerpt from “Father Time”)

Eight billion people on Earth, silent murderers
Non-profits, preachers and church, crooks and burglars
Hollywood corporate in school, teachin’ philosophies
You either gon’ be dead or in jail, killer psychology
Silent murderer, what’s your body count? Who your sponsorship?
Objectified so many bitches, I killed their confidence
The media’s the new religion, you killed the consciousness
Your jealousy is way too pretentious, you killed accomplishments
Niggas killed freedom of speech, everyone sensitive
If your opinion fuck ’round and leak, might as well send your will
The industry has killed the creators, I’ll be the first to say
To each exec’, “I’m saving your children”—We can’t negotiate
I caught a couple of bodies myself, slid my community
My last Christmas toy drive in Compton handed out eulogies
Not because the rags in the park had red gradient
But because the high blood pressure flooded the caterin’
So what’s the difference ’tween your life when hiding motives?
More fatalities and reality bring you closure
The noble person that goes to work and pray like they ’posed to?
Slaughter people too, your murder’s just a bit slower.

Kendrick Lamar (Excerpt from “Worldwide Steppers”)

The first time I fucked a white bitch
I was sixteen at the Palisades
Fumblin’ my grades, I traveled with the team
The apache life, Centennial was like
When Mrs. Baker screamed at Doughboy
Mixed that with Purple Rain
They interchanged the scenes
Happy just to be out the hood
With all the wealthy kids
Credit cards and family plans
She drove her daddy’s Benz
I found out that he was a sheriff
That was a win-win
Because he had locked up Uncle Perry
She paid her daddy’s sins
Next time I fucked a white bitch
Was out in Copenhagen
​good kid, m.A.A.d city tour
I flourished on them stages
Whitney asked did I have a problem
I said, “I might be racist”
Ancestors watchin’ me fuck was like retaliation

Kendrick Lamar (Excerpt from “Worldwide Steppers”)