Tone
They call you Queen
But don’t want your crown
To shine brighter than theirs
And you might come off a certain way
If you wear it too often
Others will always try to
Strip you of your title
False kings at best
They praise your intellect
But tell you to tone it down
Just enough to not exclude
Anyone by making them
Feel insecure because they don’t
Think the way you do
Speak the way you do
So you have to meet them
On common ground.
They uplift you
For the sake of being able to
Tear you down when you
Have ceased to do the very things
They believed made you
Worthy of their admiration
You absorb all the cruelties
That society expects you to
In addition to shielding the men in your life
From harm’s way
While being ridiculed for not
Moving enough mountains
Letting your back break from
All those burdens you were meant to carry
They tell you to watch your tone
That even with everything going on
A black woman raising her voice
Is something that cannot be condoned
They want you to be independent
But not so much that you
Won’t need anything from anyone.
Please remember that you will
Ruffle some feathers,
Turn a lot of heads
And always be an unstoppable force.
Silky Blue Dress
That silky blue dress has a lot of stories to tell
A story of first dates
Conversations cut short
While we take shortcuts in dark alleys
I don’t think there was ever a
Dinner reservation
Or a movie showing
But his act was like clockwork
After he invades my space
I lose the desire to attend the fictional
Movie showing
Or to rush to the dinner reservation
That was never made
This dress reeks of virgin tears
And a half-experienced jock’s sweat
My mother has no clue
She assumes things are going well
We’ve left the house several times
Even with a piece of me lingering each time
Within the sanctuary of my room
He takes me to places
I do not wish to visit
Everyone’s doing it
I do not have the luxury of saying “No”
I do not say much of anything
It’ll be over in a couple of minutes anyway
Until next time
When he suggests, I wear this silky blue dress
Alexis Garcia (she/her) is a Queer Hispanic writer from New York, NY. She graduated from Manhattanville College in 2017 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She has had a few of her poems published in UNITED: Volume RED and UNITED: Volume HONEY with Beautiful Minds LLC and Upon Arrival: Threshold with Eber & Wein Publishing. Most recently, she had some poems accepted for publication in Ariel Chart, CC&D magazine, Academy of the Heart and Mind and other publications.