BIO
Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. He is a 2016 Callaloo fellow, 2017 BOAAT fellow and the 2015 National College Slam (CUPSI) Best Poet. His poem “Police Dream #607” was selected by Joel Dias-Porter as the winner of the 2016 Emerge Literary Journal Contest. He is also a co-founder of the Afrolatinx poetry collective Piel Cafe. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Nepantla, Rattle Poets Respond, Winter Tangerine Review, Vinyl, Puerto del Sol and African Voices among others. He is a candidate for his MFA in Poetry at Ole Miss.
Bop: Everything
I Know or The Author Sits With The Ghost of His Abuelita
And
she is as I remember her nearly
a trick of the light even now
when she is the only light in the room
there are still the tubes translucent
little rivers forking at the nose
I am told could have been mine
Bueno, why don’t you tell me
everything you know?
I lost a tongue in her sickness
a body can fail
by virtue of proximity
I never knew her not sick
I do not know Spanish
except to say goodbye
Abuelita dusts her English off
until her teeth point north
Bueno, why don’t you tell me everything you know?
I gave up learning Spanish when she died
where she died the walls are beige
the flowers never grow
she died in my mouth
lo siento
see I know that word too
Bueno, why don’t you tell me everything you know?