Brotherhood VII

Kadon, Amir, Smoke, and Rah

help me paint

We crack jokes

and clown each other

and the wings I drew

them are actually there

on their backs

We paint

and we fly

Even Stanford

who’s standing guard

clowns us

talking about

Y’all can’t even stay in the lines

on a fucking drawing

No wonder y’all can’t even walk

in a straight line

The other guys clown us

for not being in class

talking about

Y’all niggas get to do

a fucking art project?

But still

they leave us alone

Even when we have

to leave the mural unfinished

for the next day

they leave it alone

It takes us a whole week

to finish

but I’m left alone

to add some final touches

here and there

and I stand back

to look at my work

our work—