Trap Queen.

My headphones baptize
my father’s gospel in trap music.

Hell hath no fire like this mixtape.
I tune every cross to the frequency of gold.

Hang them heavy
over my easter dress without a second thought

If you close your eyes for 16 years, Migos is as good as hymn
Fetty Wap could pass for disciple with the right sin

in your system.
Isn’t it crazy how anything blasted through a speaker sounds like a commandment?

weezy says face down
says *** up

I ain’t even know I could bend like this in the first place
Like a serpent or something

Now the choir sings with forked tongues
I hiss heavy as anyone else
Promise my father I’m praying to something at night

I prey
as if I don’t see predator in me too
as if Mary wasn’t a trap queen too
pushed that work for 9 months till she made a prophet

and her come up got her all the way to heaven
So where does that leave me?
With a god I can sip venom with?

I’ve been shushed Sunday still-life since I breathed organ notes like air
Or smoke
Faith is the hallucinogen no one wants to tell the truth about
Even reality bends under its submission

It’s August and my mother swears the house still has electricity

I learn that there are a lot of ways to be/in the dark
Even robbed of light i know my mother says this/with dilated pupils

The radio she uses for gospel music is still plugged in
I am the only thing in the room/that isn’t.

—By Imani Davis ♦