Cynthia Manick
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Praise Poem for VapoRub Half-Emptied

Praise the glassy-eyed me
the christened path
between throat and diaphragm
the light trail between nose and clavicle

Praise the childhood in my mouth
Sunday morning cartoons
under a striped stained blanket
where the Smurfs look
extra blue that day

Praise the Monday telenovelas
where a twin slept with
a doctor who was married
to the other twin

Praise the aunties with
spurred or callused feet
and the best hands for brow,
onion broth, and gossip

Praise the mothers who light
no candle in grief− instead
they pull a side drawer off its track
for garlic tinctures
and blue bottles half-empty

Praise the blue bottle
its text smeared by lined fingers
year after year after year

Praise the blue bottle
with no label at all
just a fire waiting to be scooped
and spread over

Praise the steamed stubborn towel
that bakes us in
completes its job
and holds us hostage
​
Praise Vicks and any-
brand VapoRub
for making our melanin remember
how to breathe and live

When Some Poets Go Over Their Reading Time on Stage

It’s as if they revert back
to nights of scarlet Solo cups,
and they’re toasting themselves
for knowing the name Descartes
or building the perfect card tower;
six layers up is the new record.
Or maybe they had a Price Is Right
dream and this    is      their    moment,
to spin for a golden chalice,
have mic fever ‘cause the crowd
is chanting their name and numbers.

They imagine themselves as a superhero,
legs spread in a power stance.
Eyes gazing over a needy city
spreading words, rhyme, or look that says
I know what you know,
see it in my eyes or
in the threads
of this mic’d up red cape.

Or their a modern-day cowboy or girl,
day-walking about breaking
instead of being broken–
wild grey horses
their stalls barely holding
the size of the MC saying
their name in lights.
​
It’s as if they’re all
fighting the belief
that their poems
stacked
like past lives
new aches
are just loose-
skinned Clementine’s.
And they are tired
of waiting
in the shade
from people
who want
to keep them
right there.
--
Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad, 2023) which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, and author of Blue Hallelujahs. Her work has been featured in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, The Brooklyn Rail, and other outlets.


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