the (dead)name speaks
What my girl will never see is her mother
digging in the night, screaming like a horse
about to be shot as she unearths my tomb.
Only I am witness to my own desecration:
her mother holding herself over my grave,
all my ashes dried jagged in her open mouth.
February Spikener (she/they) is a Black femme poet from Detroit currently residing in Chicago and is an MFA candidate at Randolph College. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Muzzle Magazine, Poet Lore, So to Speak: feminist journal of language and art, among others. Ever inspired by their loved ones, their poems reflect how they navigate through the world and what it means to love and be loved. She believes that love is and has always been the answer and that the mastery of love is a form of survival.