Winter Poetry Issue: Morgan Parker

Magical Negro #3: The Strong Black Woman

She likes it rough. When you open her up through the mouth hole, the dumb cunt hole. You could stomp around in there. She won't feel nothing.She's fine. Not fine like fine because she's ugly. I mean that bitch is faking.

This played-out scene she loves so much so she can feel like she got a dick:Angela Bassett at the end of the movie smoking a cigarette, smug bitch burning our cities down, cleavage always only a tease, with a face like Can I help you.Yes, bitch, you can. You can strip down to wet tears and dry cum. You canbe more naked.

Stop crying. I'll give you something to cry about. She think she's better. She think she cute. She's holding out.She is nothing to hold. She is no one to worship.

Inventory of her body: hair she cut to look like a man, too-dark nipples,the way she waves those tits around, asking for it. She's always crying.That uppity face. Holy-grail pussy, a mountain peak. Her pussy self-defense.A lack of serotonin. A lack of vulnerability. No chill. Nothing real.No need to have her back because she don't have one. Just a mountainin a dark blue wilderness. She aches from the captivity.

Magical Negro #217: Diana Ross Finishing a Rib in Alabama, 1990s

Since I thought I'd be deadby now everythingI do is fucking perfect walking wreckwreckless and menI suck their bones until they're perfectI don't sleep with accolades I don't get touchedin the night all men do is cryand ask me to be their mammas I can'tget a decent fuck to save mywhen I think about their feelings I don't careIt's cool it's cool come to mama there is so muchdeath here she is casual and almost fragrant likethe word kill doesn't sound as bad as it isAll my friends are sisters and husbands I'm afraidto be uncharted I want an empire in my teeth but I can'tbe bothered to not wear silk or nothingI have grown up less mysterious than my mythAll men do is think I'm looking at themWhen I think about them tasting me I don'tI mean don't google my tits when you can justUnfortunately I have a body and I'm the onlyone in charge of it you know what I eat the bones tooI'm in the world I'm in the worldnobody cares where I came from

Morgan Parker is the author of Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night (Switchback Books 2015), selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize, and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, forthcoming from Tin House Books in 2017.