Let Us Pray 

let us pray
that someday
we
black
brown
unfortunate
will find a God
so unlike white Jesus
it will actually see the
value
in our clasped hands

let us pray
that
white Jesus does not become
jealous
sew our clasped hands
to the cement
and make us mop with our
dry tongues
the blood that our sons spill
Our costume hands too worn
to catch them
adorn them
touch them

let us pray
let us rejoice
in the holy that is
New God
The one that don’t
see no harm in putting
her
knitting down for a few seconds
and kicking the white people
Off
the colored playground
the one they didn’t even like
until
they saw the woodchips soaking up our
tears and
the swings working just fine
for our purposes

let us pray
that Miles Davis and
Duke Ellington stay
Ours
after the custody battle
Lord
Our God
Divine Mother
birth us anew
and please
press us to your skin
After

we
Black
Brown
unfortunate
will die
without it

By Khalypso

Biography:

Khalypso is a 17 year old poet and actress born in Berkeley, CA and currently residing in Elk Grove, attending Franklin High School. Ms Osborne has been writing poetry since she was in the second grade and is currently beginning her first year of submitting her works to different literary journals, reviews, and anthologies.

Her work centers primarily around charting the existence of being a black woman living in America, although topics such as mental health, queerness, and coming-of-age have been known to Charleston themselves from her fingertips, transitioning into a frenzy of Historical references, extended metaphors, homages to soul food, and jazz connoisseurship, duels between religion and logic, onto her notebook pages, ending in a pirouette of humanity.