Hot House Mamas
Wish I could save you
from all the fissures, cracks
and hot flashes
I know what it’s like dying
to see a once strong body
slip away
to find yourself on your knees
where you used to stand
pains in your back or along
a ridge
garbage like cancer growing
we are hot house mamas
shifting temperatures like tides
capillaries and veins showing
recycling won’t save us
how can one recycle a life?
We want to believe in
reincarnation
maybe there’s more to this
maybe this is not an ending
we will wake up
renewed
lessons learned
ready to begin again
Human
What are we in the end anyway
but a conglomeration of light
flashes of darkness
just beyond the reach
of the eye
spirit, solidified for a thousand
moments
We found a way
to harness air
to swallow it deep inside
believed ourselves to be more
than molecules
greater than the stars
Regina Jamison
Regina Jamison is a Lambda Literary 2014 Fellow. She received her MFA from the City College of New York. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals among them are, Switchgrass Review, Sinister Wisdom: Black Lesbians We Are the Revolution, Five Two One Magazine, Magma Literary Journal: Deaf Issue, The Americas Poetry Festival of New York Anthology 2016, Promethean Literary Journal, Off the Rocks: An Anthology of GLBT Writing Vols. 14 & 15, and Poetry in Performance Journal Vol. 43. Online, her poetry has appeared in Castle of Our Skin: Black Poet Miniature Challenge, Gnashing Teeth Journal, Silver Birch Press – Me as a Child Series, The Lake Literary Journal, and Mom Egg Review. Her poems will also appear in the upcoming issue of BAM 42 Stories. You can read her new essay in the Bronx Memoir Project Vol. 5 Anthology. Her short stories have appeared in In This Together: Stories of Romance & Survival During the Pandemic, Girls Who Bite: Vampire Lesbian Anthology, Zane’s Purple Panties, and the Lambda Literary Anthology: Gaslight. She was a Guest Editor for Gnashing Teeth Publishing’s anthology, SHE: Seen. Heard. Engaged. Her first novel, Choosing Grace, was published with Bella Books.