poetry
I do not subscribe that strongly to astrology
and still speak in the tongue of the truest
believer. What I mean by this is, my sister
and I share a star-chart, we Gemini water-bearers,
and we could not be more different, she,
running no-questions-asked into every
burning building, every deep end, every
unknowable, and I, putting faith only in things
I can still touch: my JBL speaker, an endless
assortment of planners and journals, the necklace
my sister sent my first Christmas away from home.
We have always constellated different skies.
And still, I say I can only process emotions because
my moon lives in Pisces, or, yes, my father will
question every decision you make, he’s a Capricorn,
there’s nothing we can do about it, or, momma
isn’t afraid to side-eye a cop sometimes,
must be all that Taurus in her blood.
I do not know what lives on the other
side of my prayers, unseen hand or
cosmic void. I just put my faith in
whichever one hears me first.
Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson is a Black queer poet, performer, and educator from San Diego, CA, Co-Director of the award-winning Stanford Spoken Word Collective, and Editorial Assistant at the Adroit Journal. A two-time CUPSI finalist, his work has been featured or forthcoming on Write About Now Poetry and Button Poetry, and in The Adroit Journal, The Unified Anthology, The Oakland Arts Review, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a degree in Cultural/Social Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing at Stanford University, where he has also led two-quarter long poetry workshop courses.