Hanif Abdurraqib (b.1983)

If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet 

if I make it to heaven, I will ask for all of the small pleasures
I could have had on earth. And I’m sure this will upset

the divine order. I am a simple man. I want, mostly,
a year that will not kill me when it is over.

A hot stove and a wooden porch, bent under
the weight of my people. I was born, and it only got worse

from there. In the dead chill of a doctor’s office,
I am told what to cut back on and what to add more of.

None of this sounds like living. I sit in a running
car under a bath of orange light and eat the fried chicken

that I promised my love I would stray from
for the sake of my heart and its blood

labor. Still, there is something about the way a grease
stain begins small and then tiptoes its way along

the fabric of my pants. Here, finally, a country
worth living in. One that falls thick from whatever

it is we love so much that we can’t stop letting it kill
us. If we must die, let it be inside here. If we must.