Joshua Merchant

On Time Traveling to Accept My Father’s Apology

I am fresh out the hospital for the third time 
when told they tried to tell my father when I 
was old enough to talk that he had already 
decided to never listen. when I first see my- 
self on tv it is with a bullet through a man 
terrified, fighting for his best friend. in the 
end she dies too. not before leaving a trail 
of breadcrumbs for the police- my first reveal 
of personal taste is through Adina Howard, a tape 
I found and danced in my room to at six years old. 
I would never say her career is deceased, instead, I will 
give you a history lesson. I will let you know she shook for me 
and my father. and I carried his stake in my back 
long before he knew to teach me about 
the master’s house we turned into a juke joint.
the sweat on Adina’s thigh rolled like the sugar
he used to try to shake from thy blood. still, 
my father loved us both. he had too. love was the 
only choice we had. Adina’s ass and breasts are embraced 
by cotton and leather, she winks at me through 
the cassette cover and my granny’s wrinkled finger 
points to her forehead. says she look like a blood stain
to you? she was sposta be. so was your father.
I ask Granny but will I be? will daddy be the reason?
is it cuz I don’t look like her while shaking in the dark?
she asks me does that matter? do you want him to be? 
we all look the same while dancing. read the heat 
of his blood the way your ears learned to trace wax, 
use the water in your eyes if you have to, 
he’s scared. he’s crying. he never stopped. 
one of the aunties in Adina’s “Freak Like Me”
video drops it low in a platinum skirt and creates 
a geyser. WE never stopped. even when we found joy.

Joshua Merchant (THEY/THEM/THEIRS) is a Black Queer native of East Oakland exploring what it means to love as an intersectional being. A lot of what they’ve been exploring as of late has been in the realm of what it means to be a “Delectable Negro” in a world with an insatiable appetite for Blackness and the many ways we show up spiritually, mentally, and physically. They address the countless exaggerations of white fantasy as a means of humanizing the Black Queer experience through a lens only someone who grew up ashy and yet a teardrop slicker than the average lesson any Corner-Store-Prophet could provide. They've had the honor to witness their work being held and understood in literary journals such as 580Split, Soup Can Magazine, Snow Flake Magazine, Corporeal, Obsidian Literature & Arts In The African Diaspora, Verum Literary Press, Ice Floe Press, Hotazel Review, MORIA and elsewhere. They have also received the 2023 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award for poetry and was nominated for the 2023 Best of the Net Poetry Award by Spare Parts Lit. Their forthcoming book is scheduled to be released in 2025-2026 by Game Over Books.