Belinda is a born and bred “Sucka Free City” (San Francisco Bay Area) native, fourteen-year veteran community organizer, and soon-to-be Sarah Lawrence College alum that has been writing since she was four. She first tried her hand at performance poetry with her high school crew, Sable Vitality. She then began writing, producing, and performing spoken word theater with the Bay Area-based group, Colored Ink. She has been blessed to share the stage with Piri Thomas, Devorah Major, Ise Lyfe, Sonia Sanchez and many other gifted spirits. She was recently awarded a Citation of Excellence for her winning poem “Cherry & Blanton” in the “Roads to Equality” Poetry Prizes as part of Sarah Lawrence College’s Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides of 1961. She is an Aries-Taurus cuspian whose personal interests includes anything that builds transformative justice. When she’s not shining light on the world with her laughter, you can find her trying to spread the fierce essence of the hippie.thug.chic.nerd that she is lyrically through her poems.

Middle Set Seed

I can’t think of the last time I called for my mother. Told her I love her. Asked for her guidance. These things seem mundane to yolk still perfectly placed in shell. Though I feel as if I am grasping for a dream, lost to me by awake. Yet, my tongue tastes the onion and salt pork in her pinto beans as I place red onions and garlic in black beans on the stove. Wonder what it felt like to protect the only person who loved her more than herself. Or so they say. Their love, formed by Baptist monogamy, ransacked by glass pipe and black cherry Cisco. Glued by nine seeds. Nine seeds in sets of three. Middle seed of the middle set would be the riff in nucleus. Or so he said. Or so we believed. Some of us. The rest of us chipped at our own insecurity to reveal the security we provided for them. The lived psychedelic fantasy of a united unit. The others told her he couldn’t be there. Authorities told her lover couldn’t be in the house. Couldn’t be near. She hid him in closets while hiding us from ourselves with lies about their use. Little did she know their abuse would catch up to one of us, one night, when they figured they’d teach us a lesson. The kind of lesson that leaves scars on the veins and nude in light. He left scars on the middle set seed. Asked her to touch. Wonder what my mother imagined when she heard these scars leave my sister’s lips – her beloved man instructing her beloved child to touch her beloved man’s limp.

Little Sally

For Douglas Kearney

Little Sally

watch her

shifting in

sauce her

East moan

connects her

West niggle

rove Sally

rise wipe

those sweepin’

eyes put

hands on

their hips

make back

bones thick

shake that

load off

weep and

rise Sally

shake that

load off

rise and

cling Sally

burn it

to the

one that

you loath

the best.