Reverie Koniecki

Reverie Koniecki is an African American writer and educator living in Dallas, Texas. She is working towards her MFA in Poetry at New England College. Her poems and prose have appeared in Entropy, Thimble Magazine, and Off the Margins.

Moses

Christmas morning
she takes the promised children

to FAO Schwarz and ushers
them through twin nutcrackers

Walking past black and white keys
that landed Tom Hanks a job

she steers them around the sweets counter.
A shepherd without staff or star,

she leads them to the elevator
presses the button for North.

The children cry silently
their fish mouths bubbling

the threat of spilled wine
onto marbled floors

they wait for something to burn or speak.
The loss prevention guard with hollow eyes

looks right through the fugitives.
He figures-eights around them

following the path of the almost-life-sized train.
The threat of justice thickens.

They wait and watch white children
build monuments to their destinies with Legos.

Fruit

we closed our petals to make fists
a leftover sliver of moon
doubles our shadows

intention signifies
the distance between sound and light
if the mind is a gentle thunderstorm

then a threat is as beautiful
as dusk lips pressing hard into the night
the way your lover does

when he wants to get him some
as a black boy in a hoodie
going home for dinner

as the fingers of a bruise
blackening into a plum after
your man beats your ass

as the click of an officer’s safety
ticking like a single second
instead of opening

as the door knob turning on itself like a snitch
you’ll live by the skin of your eye teeth
to be innocent

you were indicted before you were born
if the order of adjectives determines your net worth
then i am dead broke until the end of the month

my therapist tells me to breathe
but i think that bitch is lying
this is not a costume

or a theater of indignities
or a silent movie
my father wears gold dentures

lies are less vulgar than truth
there will always be bystanders
to collect the teeth of ornaments

handing from dead trees
hunger is the first vital sign
o how sweet the fruit