KOBINA WRIGHT
Confronting Expansion
The boy will make new friends who will harvest laughter
drinks loves hates. He recognizes it’s best not to hate alone.
Better to split it with those you fall on your face with
and those who deliver you like ripe plums after you’ve fallen.
Will she get a letter from him through her mother by postman?
Will his word excite her even as she sees
the new hair that has broken through his skin?
Will her friends ring with jealous elation for her?
He’ll have to smoke outside with the crickets.
He might mind the crookedness of cold but
it’ll straighten out his life.
He just might discover someone and show off his wit.
Help him forget about all the letters he’s not writing.
Confronting the Monuments
The pier, a monument to the city
no longer flares its nose over a beach
only the water
shading its company of lumbering planks
soaked and rotting to sounds
like music of the lapping and crying
of gulls that ricochets off the whistling
crisp morning sunlight.
Giggles shimmer near a defaced wall
a mural of love
on an abandoned building built on sand.
You decided alone.
Because your father ran with packs.
Because your mother didn’t understand
hair past the ear.
Because beer was intoxicating and
nomadic footing was called adventure.
Because you didn’t move to Canada.
Because you didn’t understand then
what choice was built on.
Kobina Wright is a second generation Southern California native and attended the University of Georgia for two years before transferring to California State University, Fullerton, where she earned her BA in journalism.
She has written for publications such as LACMA Magazine, The Daily Titan and CYH Magazine. In 2004 she wrote her third volume of poetry, Say It! Say Gen-o-cide!!, which is dedicated to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. In 2009 she co-authored a volume of nuler poetry called A Crime And A Simplification Of Something Sublime, and in 2010 wrote a volume of nuler poetry titled 50.
In March 2013 Kobina’s artwork was featured in Boxcar Poetry Review, and in April 2013 selected poems were featured in The Bicycle Review and Burningword Literary Journal.
