Dirty Red, Black, High Yellow, & Brown Lil’ Baby

A gaggle of shiny oiled 

Thighs parade onto 

The field.

Dirty red, Black, 

High yellow, & Brown Lil’ Baby.

Flipped over Fruit cup juice slides off the sides of 

their hands.

The tall park lights shine 

bright overhead, 

casting down on the Richmond Heights Giants,

as they kneel down in prayer. 

To God. 

To Football.

To Mama.

To Uncle Pat.

To Money.

To The park.

To God.

To God.

To God.

Dirty red, Black, High Yellow, & Brown Lil’ baby,

gossip underneath a gumbo-limbo tree.

Bass cuts in.

Crowd screams.

Chest hits crash into the space

above everyone’s heads.

The fog of grilled meat.

The laughter surrounding cigar smoke and old men.

Dirty Red, Black, High yellow, & Brown Lil’ baby

swing their hips.

On the side lines.

To ghost town Dj’s on the breakdown.

Folks can hear the victory across town.

The atmosphere is so 

Electric. 

Curse words and failed bets

Just turn into shrugged shoulders

and knee slaps.

Besides, It’s way to many mama’s

talking to girlfriends about their men.

Way too many cocoa coated babies running around

to engage in conflict.

The grounds are littered with

plastic cups and chip bags.

Dirty Red, Black, High yellow, & Brown Lil’ baby, kick the trash.

They walk home together In the night.

Not scared.

For what?

These are their streets.

They walk home together.

In the night.

Careful not to step on cracks

In the concrete.

A false move can break your mama’s

back. 

or gentrify your community.

These are and will always be their streets.

Dirty Red, Black, High Yellow, & Brown Lil’ Baby.

About Arsimmer

I am a poet/Spoken Word artist who has been practicing for over a decade. I’ve worked diligently on my craft and style and would like to accomplish having my work published in community driven initiatives.

My work is centered around my experiences growing up as a girl child in Miami, Florida. My city, like any other,  has a unique culture that is so potent it influences how people approach life, violence, race relations, love, and ambitions. The Dialect, locations, & histories of my world are the tools I’ve found to help me streamline the stories I tell in my work. Music is the base of my being and song writers were the first poets I was introduced to. My music gumbo ranges from Angel Bat Dawid, to Cat Stevens, to Da Baby. But my drug of choice is funk & 70’s soul R&B. I incorporate the glide, meter, & cadences, of the music in my poetry. It makes the work feel like a story that has existed long before it reached me. I make it a point to speak in my voice. I do this so that the youth that I educate, and the community I serve, understand the authenticity in their voices and the beauty of their own stories. 

I am currently working on a collection of poems paired with visuals, which will illustrate my own story of undergoing a divorce, becoming a single parent, and becoming a survivor of mental and sexual abuse, all amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the continuous murders of black bodies, and the traumatizing unsettling shift in our nations political & social climate. 

I have recently been commissioned to submit a piece to the Kitchen Table Literary Arts Center. The Center’s new exhibition will feature original pieces which are to be created via the exchange of works by visual artists with writers. The work of the writer will serve as a muse to the work of the painter, sculptor, photographer, etc. and vice versa. My poem “In Us”, which is my personal account of dealing with depression and generational trauma, was published in Venice Magazine’s Summer 2020 issue, both online and physical (https://venicemagftl.com/in-us/).