Phillip J. Ammonds
Two Poems
Ode to my mother
my lips
my eyes
the way I taste
how I know before I should
my hands
my feet
the way I sway
back and forth at the stove
my stare
my neck
oh how it twists
when I hear children cry
this hair all of this luxurious
kinky, curly, straight, black,
brown, red, blonde, blue hair
all this hair
a crown of glory
signaling that I am made
of sweet echos of
mitochondrial chaos
Honey Moon
We ate Puccini and Bach off of each other’s lips,
during evenings of curry trances,
Political musings, smoke filled laughter.
That building condemned by love.
Floors creaked under eager weight of slick youth.
Slats thumped a song on the neighbors;
Fatigue blocked their protest.
Our hands painted walls with vivid plans
of sun ripened vacations, dark plumb seas–
trimmed in iridescent, Northern lights.
New love knows no bounds.
Joy, boxed and tied into four rooms.
No worries. No worries. No worries.
Get drunk and choke on upchucked love,
’til the world crawls through cracks,
looking to take what you have.
Phillip J. Ammonds, a Brooklyn native, is a founding member of the writing collective Writeous, with whom he has co-produced three chapbooks. Phillip curates Rainbows Across the Diaspora, the queer text reading series at Dixon Place in New York City. His work appears in the anthology Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call (Vintage Entity Press, 2013), edited by Steven G. Fullwood and Charles Stephens.
These poems are not previously published.