Stone Soup Servings is a regular series for Oddball Magazine that features upcoming performers at Stone Soup Poetry, the long-running spoken word venue in the Boston area that has partnered with Oddball Magazine. Stone Soup Poetry now meets from 7-9 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery’s new location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. The open mike sign-up at 6:30 p.m.

This Monday, Stone Soup will welcome Dexter Garcia to to the mic. She has been making a splash in the Boston scene, featuring around the area and performing at various slams. Read her poem below and be in the audience to hear a full set of her work.

 

Ten things I want to explain to a black boy about magic

1. He said breaking
is the only way the magic gets in.
That may be true for the rest of us
but he has misunderstood.
His skin is smooth like he is
dipped in chocolate.
There are no cracks.
No crevices.
and yet he is,
has always been,
magic.

2. On the mornings when the sparkle in his eye
is enough to make the most reluctant being
bend
that is when he will conquer.

3. Black boy magic is a special kind.
There is no rage there.
No envy or greed there.
Only the kinds of things that make a girl
fall in love.
It slips out when he speaks,
or seeps slowly through the palms of his hands.
He has been giving too much.
He must remember to keep some to nourish self.

4. I wish I could explain my passion
the way he speaks of his.
Clarity is not my strong suit.
But he has always been clear
even in a daze his ideas are something
one can get behind.

5. His truth is all encompassing.
It holds all the truths of all the world.
There is no half truth in this,
No half love or half hurt.
It’s all or nothing.
Usually all.
His brand of magic
makes the hardest truth
sound like church bells
too early in the morning.
Harsh and interrupting
but beautiful.

6. He holds my heart.
This takes a new kind of strength.
I am too much intensity
but he is a new kind of strength
because this heart,
it burns.
He has inspected the flames
and still put it to his lips in praise
and somehow he is not hurt.

7. When the night becomes too dark
and I am lost
as we have all been lost,
I let him guide me
into a new tomorrow.
On the dullest days
I think of who we have been together
and it sets me ablaze yet again.
He is match magic,
lighter magic.
Just the thought of him rekindles.

8. There is not enough blank space
in this ample and full universe
to capture his art and thought,
so he saves the paper
for what he feels is worthy.
It is all worthy.
I would paint his words on my walls
were I to stop hearing them in my head.
I would tattoo his thoughts on my eyelids
were I to close my eyes
and not dream of him.

9. I have been trying to safeguard
his passage into my life
since the moment he entered it.
I want to keep it always open.
This I know is impossible.
He may not enter and exit
whenever he pleases.
But it seems I cannot close the gaps
with him on the outside.

10. He seems nothing but a theory.
Too much magic in one body
and black boy
has been causing me no pain
but my heartaches have spilled over
into what we could have been.
What we may someday be.
It seems I cannot close the gaps
with him on the outside because this
is where the magic gets in.
and he has always been,
always will be,
magic.