With evocative and elegant language, Quincy Smith ʼ25 invites us to awaken our senses. The poem explores questions about how we find our personal identity. Photo Courtesy of Pixabay.

Smolder the brick until it breaks in half :: of my siblings hate me now:: is the time to reach for their hands:: hurt from saving everyone:: is lost including you: are not screaming enough:: is enough: with all that performative shit:: gets real when you’re black:: is gold: is skin: is dancing :: is recklessness:: is blackness:: is laughing over a good meal:: is filling:: me up with rage:: can be soft:: like heat hovering in our throats: are precious things : are really hard for me right now: can you understand why we are the way that we are: lungs are capable of love: can spread into our stomachs: are full things except I still feel hungry: isn’t close to the word that describes it: must stop: it must stop: it from invading the light in front of us : plus you equals infinity : is finite because we can only stretch out limbs so far: from home we are : stranded in sand: turns into glass you know: why no one loves you Quincy : is not my name : is burned onto skin but not crystallized into matter

Into tangible sweetness

Into bone

Into reality

I never heard it

The sound

The music

I’ve waited for the moss to turn gray

And yet my mind is still hollow

Some days my muscles ache and movement lags like salty molasses gliding across styrofoam. Some days my nights turn into cold nightmares dressed in peach perfume. Most fog-filled afternoons consist of my eyes tearing up and brisk air reminding my lips that it’s not over yet

But I will wait

I will wait for sun

I will wait for combustion

I will wait for fire

The morning can only hold so many promises.

I peered into the backyard

And saw our pool risen from dead

mist gathers above the ground like treading water and thick sand My hands grasp for metal

But I’m met with dewy skin

Remembering that my name is its own

I call for him

I call for sound but leering above stands infinite light

A column of diamond

I wait for it to embrace me

The wind singing its song

My eyes glitter in the shape of pearls

My chest lifts toward the shape of God

My breath begins to densify

Hands shiver like tectonic plates

I become the ground

Sight loses its definition

My fingerprint loses its definition

The skin smoothed over

The supple water laying in my eyelids

Plummet towards dead grass

subtlety is the difference between sound and breathe as wind turns into machine

I become something to listen too

I allow lightness draw my breath

The color has gone too fast

Smooth fabric dances into the shape of an animal Its form envelops my vision

I don’t know what it looks like

But I hear the sea rushing so I let a whisper escape my lips “Who are you?”

Quincy Smith '25

Poetic Perspectives: “Ignite”