What Begets What Begets
by Rio Cortez

Read the automated transcript.

Everything is a ring. I am working on a belief
that starts like that: everything
is a ring, not symmetrical, it has
the illusion of progress

*

I woke up sad so all day long I tried
to make the world sad around me

*

I heard in a movie once that hurt people
hurt people. Now I always say that
when I comforting sad friends.
I curve the ring so not even I can see it
how it winds right back to itself, loops
right around me when I think
it must be going

I say to myself: look at this sad fool

*

I am always explaining to my lover
I say to him: there are two kinds
of knowing. Some knowing is as close
as my own palm, I don’t even know
I know it. I love my mother & my mother
loves me. Other knowing gets pushed
beneath

*

Beauty always strikes me when I consider it’s going & am hurt by it
how now light enters through the curtains at dusk & I find it beautiful
because it is about to change

*

One layer of that knowing I mentioned, is of the self.
Isn’t it like that for everyone. Sometimes
the ring comes round & I feel I don’t deserve a thing.
Then I do the work of knowing. I see myself
reflected in the bathroom mirror, it’s been a long
day & I am alone, my hair pulled into a tight chignon
& I know better by looking at me next to nothing, compared
to nothing & I say thanks to someone out there

"What Begets What Begets" by Rio Cortez, collected in THE BREAKBEAT POETS VOLUME 2: BLACK GIRL MAGIC, copyright © 2018 Haymarket Books. Used by permission of the poet.