"Brooklyn Brown" and Other Poems By Stacy Vargas
Photo Credit: Nick Owuor - Unsplash
Brooklyn Brown
Crown your glory
Honey and melanin
This golden tone is your identity
To unify within the gentrified community
Townhouses and brownstones
Made of Triassic sandstones
The projects and Section 8 buildings
Made of burnt clay bricks
Bloodlines stretch
From the nations of Africa
To the British East Indies
To the Caribbean Islands
Early makings of gold and bronze
From pyramids and tombs
Outshines the desert sun
Bring forth your beauty
Life Sentence
Unwanted lesions in their cells
Size increases inside the human walls to take over the body
Nodes created to expose the true danger of the crime
Once released, they can disappear without a trace
May return with no remorse
They spread around until the chemical bomb the areas to stop them
Reaching places that are valuable yet vulnerable to control
Chemical bombs continue to change the nature on the inner environment
Through food, mental-health, and physical activity
They must be taken down until they slow down or fade away
To be reborn or reform for the better
Ongoing treatment can change and extend the life expectancy
Have them confined into smaller cells not to be released again
3 is the number of my life
It is the month and day I was born.
The number of kids my parents had.
I was in the middle of two sisters of the same sign with different personalities.
The number of diamonds on my pendant necklace my husband gave me on our wedding day.
It is the number of gems on my infinity ring of January, March, and November birthstones.
My family: myself, my husband, and our daughter.
34 is the age when I had my miscarriage.
37 is the age that I had breast cancer and survived for 5 years.
43 is the age when the cancer spread giving a life sentence of ongoing healing.
It is the number of tumors on parts of my brain where more spread in other parts of my body.
It is where I get a blood draw, an injection, and an infusion every month for treatment.
It is a number that I pray it can be a charm.
It is now 3:37pm, add another 7 to the end to know my birth date.
It is also the time I finish writing this poem.
Stacy Vargas
My poems have been published in 1997 in a print publication called Guava Shakti: Voices of Women of Color which was also a club where I participated as a member during my undergraduate college years. I graduated from St. Francis College with an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry). I had self-published a collection of poetry in 2018 called: Fight, Survive and Thrive. I had published some of her poems in Feminessay and Wingless Dreamer. I became a fellow last year with Anaphora Literary Arts during their writing residency.
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