Manga Golden Shovel - One Piece I want to make sure you can hear my thank yous before you go. I hope you know what kind of love you showed me. Back then, I disassociated my mind for what I thought was the best way to shield myself from getting hurt. Loving me felt like an uphill battle. I was convinced that I was someone who will never find love, who wishes for a kind person that sounds like a fantasy. I wondered if it was really me you were looking for. Am I really the one who makes you laugh? The one who is down to watch a marathon of Demon Slayer and Good Omens until the sun switches with the moon? For all you know, I could just be like anyone else. Nothing special behind this smile, I figured. I wonder if you need someone better and more. Yet, there you stood. The one who stayed by my side, who has seen the best and worst of me. Such a person who listens to my dreams of writing poetry and how much I love “Bad Decisions” by Ariana Grande. You have seen how much blood sweat, and tears I shed on the path to find my voice. In this life, I finally met someone who has a heart bigger than His vision of a perfect life. I’ll keep your touch in my veins tattoo your words you whisper to me every night up until my body is ready to leave this world. To the one who stayed with me to the end, all the way until today I cannot thank you enough for sharing a space in your heart for me. You are the person I call as my heartbeat for life. I am loving this life a bit more because you are here with me

A cropped photo of a panel from the manga One Piece featuring Portgas D. Ace crying while clinging on to his brother Luffy then saying, “Thank you…for loving me!!!”

Currently in grad school (for graduation!) and thought I share one of the poems I worked on for workshop yesterday. Let’s all cry together.

#onepiece #onepiecemanga #portgasdace #poetrycommunity #goldenshovelpoem #poem #poetsofcolor #asianamericanauthors #gradschool

Tonight, in Oakland BY DANEZ SMITH I did not come here to sing a blues. Lately, I open my mouth & out comes marigolds, yellow plums. I came to make the sky a garden. Give me rain or give me honey, dear lord. The sky has given us no water this year. I ride my bike to a boy, when I get there what we make will not be beautiful or love at all, but it will be deserved. I’ve started seeking men to wet the harvest. Come, tonight I declare we must move instead of pray. Tonight, east of here, two boys, one dressed in what could be blood & one dressed in what could be blood before the wound, meet & mean mug & God, tonight, let them dance! Tonight, the bullet does not exist. Tonight, the police have turned to their God for forgiveness. Tonight, we bury nothing, we serve a God with no need for shovels, we serve a God with a bad hip & a brother in prison. Tonight, let every man be his own lord. Let wherever two people stand be a reunion of ancient lights. Let’s waste the moon’s marble glow shouting our names to the stars until we are the stars. O, precious God! O, sweet black town! I am drunk & I thirst. When I get to the boy who lets me practice hunger with him I will not give him the name of your newest ghost I will give him my body & what he does with it is none of my business, but I will say look, I made it a whole day, still, no rain still, I am without exit wound & he will say Tonight, I want to take you how the police do, unarmed & sudden & tonight, when we dream, we dream of dancing in a city slowly becoming ash.

#blackhistorymonth #queerpoets #oaklandlove #LGBTQVoices #PoetryCommunity #BlackArtMatters #QueerLiterature #PoetsOfColor #BlackQueerArt

"The war ended/depending on which war you mean: those we started/those before, millennia ago and onward/ those which started me, which I lost and won-/ these ever-blooming wounds."(Natalie Diaz)

Can I convince you to read Postcolonial Love Poem?

#poetry #poetsofcolor #indigenouspoets