These Brazil Nut Nigga Toes
These nigga toes, bent below arched soles run, real, fast.
These nigga toes run real fast.
These nigga toes are full, involuted, tip nigga toe, across this floor.
These nigga toes are full, complex.
These nigga toes are etched brackish from nigga work.
These nigga toes are attached to blackish nigga feet.
And spring come after long winter, these nigga toes
the whitest part of this pale nigga body,
are a reflection of the code switchin
this black and white nigga man learned early.
These nigga toes crack in the sun, and come summer,
these nigga toes attract attention from lotion production facilities
because these nigga toes love to be bare.
These nigga toes.
These nigga toes are lengthy appendages, erudite ligaments
with moving wiggling minds of their own.
These nigga toes.
I said these nigga toes are attached to blackish blackfeet, so
these nigga toes are dancing in the mud, dance the mud dance of my nigga people.
And because these are erudite nigga toes, are monkey toes,
and are capable, themselves, they are pouring one out for the homies.
These nigga toes.
These nigga toes come with no content warning,
but I am warning you, these nigga toes are capable!
I said, these nigga toes are blackish.
These nigga toes are not black ish.
These nigga toes are not right, white.
Do you even know what these nigga toes are?
These nigga toes are not Brazil nuts.
These nigga toes
are
just,
Brazil
nuts,
the Caucasian man at the Christmas party, with no content
warning, politely told me. Told everybody
as he crunched with my pride and forehead sweat
a nigger toe
proud and black, tough to crack, into a nutcracker.
We used to call these,
nigger toes.
Well mista white man, for so long I wanted an apology but the truth is
these nigga toes do not need your apology, see,
these nigga toes run real fast, as fast as god damn lightning.
These nigga toes are capable of life-giving kicking, and tender two-step forgiving.
These nigga toes curl in life’s ecstasy.
These nigga toes dip in sweet duende water, swirl entire seas,
before releasing body before brethren breathing heavy in silent rooms.
These nigga toes are attached to these silent rooms, these quiet people,
and silent things, these little secrets the world saves for me.
These nigga toes are attached to pale blackish feet
that lift to shins that carry a body, blessed just to be, nigga.
These nigga toes are blackish beauties, dark black flowering ponies,
cracked, crinkled, rippled, erudite
black.
Jarrett Ziemer holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Colorado University. His poem “A Fish-Tenkara” was awarded an honorable mention in Deep Wild Journal’s 2023 graduate student writing contest, and his poem “A Bed as a Nest” was awarded an honorable mention in Dreamers’s 2023 Dreamers Writing Contest. Jarrett received an International Merit Award in the Atlanta Review 2023 International Poetry Competition, was the featured poet at the 33rd annual Headwaters Conference, and is a 2024 Jack Straw Fellow. You can find Jarrett’s work on his website (jarrettgziemer.com) as well as in About Place Journal, Belmont Story Review, Creative Nonfiction, and other publications.
Read Jarrett Ziemer’s other Letter to America poem, “lips to feet.”
Header photo by HongYZhong, courtesy Shutterstock.
