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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
v GREEN v
TALL
v HOLLOW v
v
STRONG
CLIMBING v
v REACHING v
ONCE,
UPWARD I FELT v
NODES, THE LEAVES
CREAK AND FELT v
PEACE v
SWAY _-^+
WHISPS
IN v
THE
BREEZE v
v ROOTED +
v | ^-
DEEP | | >= |
BELOW | | | |- = |
v GENTLE | | | | v | | |
GIANT | | | | | | |
PEACEFUL | | | v | | | |
LIFE// / / / / / // | | | \ \ \ \ \ \ | / / / / / / / / / || |
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
ThisisapoembutIwontseperatethewords.Thisisapoembutit’showIseetheworldwhenI’mlyingonmybedwishingforawayout.ThisisapoembutIwon’tformatitasone,becauseifIdidyouwouldn’tseeeverythingthatIdo.IfthiswasagoodpoemmaybeI’dsayalittlemore,butit’shardwhenmypaperisblurryandripping.IfthiswasabadpoemthenIwouldn’thavewrittenit.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
I fear death not for its permanence,
nor the inability to evade it,
but because I crave the word dancing on my tongue...
a mercury drop that splits and reunites,
drips from my lips like viscous iodine, ground glass,
and thick, cold nectar I'd never yearn to savor.
It is fast, a mechanical, shrieking bird
snatching the meaning from every word I've ever spoken.
It is a first love,
a phantom seen in my childhood nightmares,
a familiar bone in my being,
and I've never ceased loving its velvet rot.
What I yearn for I must fear:
When I acquire it,
my mouth will fill with ashes
and there is nothing else I can have or want,
and I will spend eternity cleaning my teeth with my rib.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
Time has stop.
The waves lap at the feet of us.
The water is red,
Some black as us skin.
In front of us… is kin,
Or we thought was.
Their skin is white,
Like angel,
One that don’t reach you with hands,
But whip to skin.
While some decide to stand beside us,
We not accept them.
Not because they bad,
Because others were.
They think we dumb,
They do not know we
Outside of Hell.
And while it hail at sea
We sing our song.
“Jua ni mpangilio katika nchi za Magharibi;
Malaika wakinitazama, Bwana wangu.
Lala mtoto wangu, pumzika;
Malaika wakinitazama.”
They hit,
Yell,
Saying down.
We not dog.
We brother,
All blood red.
So we scream the song,
Loud for all,
Until the day we free.
Time has begun.
It’s 2025,
Where even clouds have eyes.
We’re shot down
By our fellow brethren.
We put down those blacker than us,
Mock those lighter.
We’ve conformed to the white man’s religion,
And see them as idols.
Our song is gone,
Our soul faded.
We are not all bad,
But we’ve become jaded.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
I remember the cold breeze`
Rushing against my fingertips,
Guiding me to your warm fur—
Have I ever felt so helpless,
Or was it simply wonder?
Three small bodies breathed in a woven basket,
soft as dandelion seeds in spring.
Two were dusk and shadow,
but you—
you were morning.
Your fur held the pale light of clouds,
your eyes two quiet drops of honey.
When I lifted you
the world seemed to pause in my hands,
as if beauty itself had chosen a heartbeat.
I told myself it was simple:
the prettiest one.
As though love could be measured
by color and softness.
You curled into my palms
like a small living secret,
purring a fragile song
only I could hear.
The house learned your footsteps—
light as drifting petals across the floor.
Sunlight followed you from window to window,
resting on your back
as if you were made for it.
And I thought beauty was the reason
I chose you.
But slowly I learned
it was not the color of your fur,
nor the brightness of your eyes—
it was the quiet way you trusted the world,
the way you slept without fear
against my chest.
Now the rooms are wider.
The sunlight lingers alone on the floor.
Sometimes the wind slips through the window
and brushes my fingertips again,
and for a moment
I am back in that first cold breeze—
reaching forward in wonder,
not knowing
how something so small
could fill a life.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
My knuckles are as coarse as dried mud
And could even make their own blanket.
My hands turn to wet paper
Wrinkles, refusing to snap back.
I chew my nails down to blood
Till it coats the surrounding skin
And I chew on that, too
Leaving an open, raw wound
And a sore that I refuse to heal.
I let the hair on my legs sprout
Into a thick, tangled man-brush
Until someone calls me one.
Even then,
I hover in hesitation
Because nobody has to bear it but me.
I refuse the heat,
The chemical straightener,
I let my hair be a wild, curly nest,
Sometimes I don’t touch it at all.
I walk out
In my bonnet that smells like oil,
Hello kitty pjs ripped at the seam that I have to cover,
Walmart bear shoes
With the print of my feet at the bottom.
I forget to wash my face,
And the oil settles in,
But people think I look clean.
But I’ll conceal my undereyes
And my smile lines– the ones I earned
By my manic episodes where I can’t stop laughing.
Next is my cheeks
So I can hide the acne, picked raw,
The red angry dots I couldn’t leave alone.
And then I put lipstick on my pig face
Even though It’s greasy, sticky,
And I look like a circus’ main show.
Maybe I’ll dot on fake moles,
Whenever I find that dried-up eyeliner somewhere
In this trash heap room.
Clothes choking the corner,
Closet door yawning open, jammed,
Because I’ll fold everything in three months.
I can’t tell the laundry from the floor.
The dresser top is a graveyard of plates,
Curdled forks, spoon-scum, and a crusty pot.
Even if my room is next to the kitchen,
It’s too far to walk.
I stay in the dark, rotting in bed
Until the guilt shuts me down.
Talk for a few minutes
To prove I’m still a functioning human,
Then go back to drowning
When everything gets too loud.
And it sounds like I am courting this ugliness
Like I enjoy breaking my heart.
But I stand before the mirror
And I pay every toll.
An hour of tears,
One for every soft roll that dares to appear,
One for the frantic, strange twitch
Trapping my mouth,
One for the gaps between my teeth
That scream “boy” at me,
One for my chin that’s strong
And not soft like the angels near me,
One for my jawline
That hides from every angle,
One for every hair I claw from my arms.
Because I want to be a girl.
I want to be a girl so badly it tastes like fiberglass in my throat.
And I fail.
I fail even at that.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
I will plunge my hands into the deep brown earth
To pluck the wild, velvet flowers,
And wait for you to teach me how to bind them—
An art I only want to learn from you.
I’ll lay them upon your hair, a quiet crowning,
Claiming you as the sovereign of my world,
And though I’ll never tell you the burning reason why,
My eyes will say it all.
I’ll watch you climb toward the sky,
And steal a thousand pictures of your joy,
Until the bark makes your palms tremble
And you fall back into the waiting grass.
I will tumble down beside you,
So my hands, too, carry the sting of the wood,
Both of us marked by the same adventure,
Your arms lifting me as we fall together.
When you press your lips to my forehead,
My cheek, my nose, or my hands,
I will hold my breath,
Pretending it’s just a casual thing you do,
Even when my heart tells me
It’s the only holy thing I know.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Kimora Hornbeak Poem
When I am done with my work
Take me from my home,
And force my hands onto your body,
So you, for once, can feel
Like you have finally made
Your racist mother proud.
You can flay my skin,
And you can see from inside out
While you play in my organs
And holler to those around
It’s okay because,
“This man is illegal”.
I know you’ve never experienced love.
Your wife saw a brown man
And she tanned so he’d look at her longer
And then you found him in your bed.
Is that where your hatred began?
Or did it begin
When your mother dragged a brown man into the home,
And you heard the headboard bang against the wall
While she screamed for release.
Did it begin from betrayal?
You can seek validation in my burning form
You can seek validation in me
and my daughter’s blood.
But if you look closely at my skeleton,
It looks just like yours.
Both of our spines twist and bend
And both our skulls have one missing tooth.
Go on,
Tell your mother I was quiet,
That I didn’t fight back,
That I played the role of a monster
So you can be the hero
Taking out all the illegal aliens.
When the silence persists
As you stare into the mirror,
You’ll take off that black mask
And start to cry
Because you, too, are a brown man
Jealous
That the white man is superior.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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Details |
Kimora Hornbeak Poem
Sometimes I feel them counting me
with their eyes,
not looking, but tallying,
like I am something that can be priced.
Their stares peel,
not gently, not kindly,
but like hands that don’t ask,
like ownership already decided.
I tell them to get off of me
And when they don’t
I stand there the same way I stand here,
learning the weight of being seen
and still unseen,
naked, not in body,
but in permission.
To them I am reduced,
an animal with conditions:
“prove you belong,
prove you are worthy,
prove you are more than labor.”
Why can’t I just prove I’m human and go home?
Let me go one time and then capture me,
I’m just livestock meant to be slaughtered.
I turned eighteen,
and nothing changed,
except the expectations
grew teeth,
gnawing at me to convince me of my hunger---
But I don’t wish to reach the stars
If I can’t ever touch them.
No one warns you
how exposure feels,
how it echoes,
how it lingers,
how it teaches your skin to remember
as it clings to every inch of you,
and crawls inside every crevice.
A cave diver that wishes to be a parasite.
They notice everything:
the thin, quiet history on my left wrist,
the absence on the right,
as if symmetry could mean healing,
as if clean skin means clean past.
And still,
why must I be opened like a question?
Why must my body answer
what my voice has already said?
Why must I be unfolded, inspected,
decided?
Decided.
Decided
if I am worthy of what I have made,
of what my family has made,
of what we have built with hands
that never stopped moving.
I am not your specimen,
not your threshold,
not your proof.
I am a working woman,
not something to be worn,
not something to be weighed,
but something that endures,
even when watched.
Copyright © Kimora Hornbeak | Year Posted 2026
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