Sisters (for Gwendolyn Brooks & Ntozake Shange)

by MAHOGANY L. BROWNE



Me and you be sisters

We be the same

Me and you both leaned

Against Bay Area skylines

Flirted our children's smiles

Like tremors across our hips

Danced like everyone was watching

Cuz they was and still are

Look at them, all nosey

Like they aint never seen

a world spin b4



Me and you be sisters

We be the same

Kinky hair mud child

Same jazz and funk fall from our lips

Same want for slick talking man

He fall smooth up under this jazz

Our black find a hum in every girl throat

Same black girl's kink up clean

Same colored girls

All different colors of girl



Me and you be sisters

We be Bklyn, We be the same

Colored girl

Black girl, color

We be swirling our fingers

Twisting our ideas into shiny and new

We know of the wreckage

Of the women that quake into breaks

We be loving that break

We be loving that break & tide

We love a man unafraid of all this wet,

look how he stroll

A messiah

Look at him

A metaphor for stay

And protect

And sex

And we love him so loud

He laugh and crack thunder



We be the same

Daughters heart still heavy on our hips

Her legs butter smooth & strong,

like we built her into marble and stone



She walk tenement troubles across our minds

She keep our skyline in flames,

We check in

We break

We check in

We bend for this color

And this color don't give to the bend

So our mind bend into lizards

Into 8000 different centipedes

Into coasts of wine and wind



We be Paris and Brooklyn

We be josephine liliane gwendolyn shange girl



We be enough

We be enough

We been enough



We be Momma's

mothering a world

Holding sandstorms

between our teeth

(Mshogany L. Browne © 2010)