Two Truths and Lie
after Gwendolyn Brooks
Remind me to keep fluorescing freely. We
should never have to earn joy to prove our pain real.
13 was the year I learned staying home alone wasn’t cool.
The summer my innocence was moved onto the curb, I realized we
were textbook poor, and no one dared say so. Just left
me to fight through hormones and pimples and start high school
a freshman already fresh out of youthful naivete. We
got evicted three times in two years, so I can’t linger or lurk
with the idea of policing the lint in my pockets. Too late
to save or un-spend my way out of inherited lack—we
are who we are. If takeout or movie tickets strike
me out the running for struggle, say it straight
to my face. Say, we see you withering, but we
would never offer water or else you’ll sing
wolf, siren-cry suffering again and again. Isn’t it a sin
to judge and jury those in need? We
wear the patience of Job thin
with inflated egos, drunk on self-righteousness like gin.
You said it’s hard to believe a sob story behind a smile, but we
know better. Remember—I am free to fluoresce, dazzle, jam jazz
even while mining joy each moment. No dollar can dim sun in June
the way no deficit glares as brightly as we
do, refusing to relent to capital’s chasm, losing before we toss the die.
Any eyes unable to stand my smile and striving should avert—or go blind soon.
Angel C. Dye is a poet and researcher of African American Literature from Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas by way of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A graduate of Howard University, she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kentucky, where she was a Nikky Finney Fellow. Angel's poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, and The Pierian Journal, among other places. Angel is the author of BREATHE (Central Square Press '21) and My Mouth a Constant Prayer (Backbone Press '23). She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey researching Harlem Renaissance rent parties. She writes in the tradition of a pantheon of black writers who came before her hoping to discover, as Audre Lorde explains, the words she does "not yet have."