1 Poem

Dasia Moore

Dasia Moore is a Black queer writer who grew up in the Carolinas and lives in New York. Her poetry has appeared in The Offing, Stanchion, and others. She has received fellowships from Periplus, The Point Foundation, and New York University, where she is an MFA candidate and Lillian Vernon fellow in poetry. You can find her on Twitter @daijmoore

Self-Portrait of the Poet at Home

Among boxes. Once forts. Now reduced to containers for half-wanted things. I was born 

and my mother split in two. Her mother warned me: Don’t look for the ghost half

before you are ready to find it. Back then, my father bought cheap movies. Dollar General 

double features. He muted the TV to make his own words. All seven of us children laughed.

See my father was a father, before. Cardboard fortresses admitted no ghosts. I half-

remember the flicker of a screen / something sweet / sisters cheering for mother and father

to kiss. See I was born first. My grandmother gave me good memory. Inside memory 

she folded a pen. Keep the hurt, the words, the dreams and the ghosts, the little ones’ first

sentences, all our worst fears. Remember the flicker of a palm frond caught in a storm. 

Where the river near home splits into two. I forget. I make my own words. I wonder 

about being born. Durham / ’96 / Mama and Dada in law school / name from a movie 

with Tyra Banks / still there’s a second story out there / somewhere / moving boxes 

unpack themselves / we all double over laughing / something sweet returns / another life 

flickers on screen / we build it with our pens / see I was born and given good memory / see /

I was told to write it down / I make my worlds / I wonder / sometimes I make it home.