NOOSE

by Aaliyah C. Daniels

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​Picnics were crafted around the suspense of a body
i.e. they were hanging out while the village boys hung him
off a branch, pants ‘round his ankles, tongue swole. Manhood exposed,
breast bare. To be hung is to be celebrated:
begins with a scared white woman and the protection of her virtue --
                          there goes  Smith, Tulsa, Till.
They take the body, force submission of the neighbors:
white families watch a body fall limp and enjoy
deviled eggs the body convulse, lemonade the body scratches for breath, whiskey the body fades plum.
​There goes the memorial, the itchy hands waiting --
to cut the body down,                         string the body up
bring somebody back home to their mama,
or back home to                      God.

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Aaliyah C. Daniels is a teen writer from Hunts Point, The Bronx. She was recently the winner of the first No Tokens Young Poets Prize and published in the No Tokens Journal. Her work has also published in 2020: The Year That Changed America Anthology, Collegian Magazine Fall 2019, the Columbia Journal and the Lucille Clifton Anthology in the 92Y publication. She has been recognized by Victoria Chang, Hanif Abdurraqib, and many more. For two years she has been New York Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador and has performed across the city including the Brooklyn Museum, Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Adidas, Joe’s Pub, the Apollo stage, the Intrepid, and more. As an activist, she was president of a teen activist organization called A.C.T.I.O.N. that works to dismantle oppression in the South Bronx and was a member of the Youth Justice Board where she worked to pass legislation to protect youth from social media platforms in New York City. ​Daniels is currently attending Kenyon College for the class of 2023 as an English major with an emphasis in Creative Writing and a concentration in Law. Her collection of poems and essays on Black Girlhood will be published by Sunset Press Spring of 2023.

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