No one here knows
who they are
without that word
what they aren’t
without that word
What would happen
if I said it
What would happen
if I said Black men
who have sex
with Black men
Would coalitions grow
For enemies
and allies both
Would inclusion
and exclusion kiss
Would injustice
and privilege kiss
Would the victims kiss
each of us a different sense
of who the victims are
Prince Bush is a poet from Nashville, TN whose poems appear in Cherry Tree, The Drift, The Cortland Review, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. He received a fellowship from the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets while earning his BA in English as an Erastus Milo Cravath Presidential Scholar at Fisk University. Currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati as a Yates Fellow, Prince Bush earned his MFA in from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a Truman Capote Literary Fellow.