Jasmine Reid

COMMANDMENTS

Bright blues.
  Sea shorn by flecks of gold.
    Drown here. Make like a bottle
    & swallow my stories. Float 
      unto shores I will never run,
    reach, or erode.
   Open. At the neck. Sing.
                Something
 baptismal
               but without any tales
 not evident in the blood.
    Not for nothing. I bleed
   for you. Believe in me.
 I bleed.

Jasmine Reid is a twice trans poet-child of flowers. A 2018 Poets House Fellow, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, WUSGOOD? and WATER. Born and raised in Baltimore, MD, Jasmine is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Follow her at www.reidjasmine.com.

See full list of 2018 Emerging Poets Fellows