Amber Atiya

or the time ol’ snaggle-tooth told that woodpecker head ass

dyke she saw me standing over her 2 am hexing her skin
and bones under that linty shelter blanket. How when my 
limbs been stiff as crow’s feet? Had to pay a bitch the price 

of a three piece to remove my wig and wrap my head 
before bed check. Imagine me almighty, spinning spells 
on a stud in a different dorm on a different floor. The girls 
called me witchdoctor. My case worker called me witch

doctor in the gum-speckled elevator, feigning fright. 
Sloppy Joe offered a buck for a custom curse. Requests 
poured in for boyfriends, girlfriends, a two bedroom 
for a mother of twins, a death wish for the ex who hot 

ironed her face, my cot fragrant with lesioned Cara 
Caras, half-drunk nutcracker tossed in a boot, pack 
of Hanes tanks on the sill. All I want is my mother
fucking Roy Ayers tee snatched from the laundry 

room while I peed, a sad sorceress, broccoli floret 
mashed into shirt like a logo. How I tell a woman 
too traumatized to iron her clothes I don’t know 
the mojo to stop a man’s heart, but I can teach her 

what I recall of the music scale – do-mi-sol-mi-
do – treat her to sweet plantains, make an 
opus of the school kids, dark heads bobbing. 
Blue notes outrunning the cage of the staff.

Bed #3-074 talks shyt about her dorm mate in the backyard after snacks

You know how Mario runs into the mushroom and becomes Super 
Mario? Well this bitch became Super Q or Super Ti-Ti or whatever
the fuck her name is, thas how fat she was when she came back 
from the pysch ward. It’s the meds, and there’s enough meds in this 
motherfucker to put the whole city to sleep. Either you a zombie 
chuggin Abilify or you beat-boxin fully clothed in the shower, water 
collectin in the hooda your sweater til the hood saggin like a big 
gray titty fulla water insteada milk. Now the zombie done had 
a dream and wanna visit the sixteen chapel cause the pope 
the pope the pope, like she his side piece, when there’s a church 
down the street that serves pernil every other Sunday. As for 
dreams my last trapped me in a snow globe and even though 
the snow was fake i froze to death outside a gingerbread house.  
I liked the zombie better air-lickin stars, pitchin rocks at the 
perverts from the autobody shop. She told me once these hoes 
at the shelter fuck wit you, I beat they ass. Her name Sugar. 
Cookie. Cherry. Some sweetness – and she meant that shyt too.

Amber Atiya, a supportive housing and women's rights advocate, is a multidisciplinary poet from Brooklyn. Dig on her poems in the Soul Sister Revue Poetry Compilation, Boston Review, Gulf Coast Journal, and elsewhere. Her visual and text-based art/objects have been exhibited at the Knockdown Center, Bessie's Brooklyn, and Pace Univeristy. A 2021 recipient of the Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood Award, she is a member of an arts collective for women of color celebrating 20 years in 2022. Her chapbook, the fierce bums of doo-wop, was published by Argos Books.