by Bree Bailey
OK, I’m Finally Ready to Admit My Faults
double golden shovel with Hanif Abdurraqib
How hard it is to hear the hymn that isn’t
small, gather spit up – throat, hitch into it.
We’ve crossed paths and are no longer funny.
Become new dollars. Brownstone broken. How
because of pride I keep uneven bucktooth silence
of generational poverty, my lips plump with cash. Can
all these riches make us feel less poor inside? Undress
these mink furs, like wealth bound to corpses. Split two
things from my lips. I’m sorry – what became of our bodies?
Note: a golden shovel is a poem in which the ending word of a line of a poem forms a line of another piece of written work. In this case, it is Hanif Adduraqib’s magnificent piece, “OK, I’m Finally Ready to Say I’m Sorry For That One Summer.”
Bree Bailey (she/her) is a Latine NJ native living in Austin, TX doing her best to raise a family and embrace life as a mama and a poet. As a mental health ally, Bree speaks about experiences with depression, trauma, and anxiety, and compassion, and boundless self-love. When she’s not writing, she’s eating tacos and dreaming about all the places she has yet to see and dance in with family and friends. Bree’s poems have been featured in Ample Remains, Birmingham Arts Journal, Olney Magazine, Serotonin, Wrongdoing Magazine, and are forthcoming in West Trade Review, among others.
Gulf Stream Magazine 