my deepest & most ashamed apologies to Assotto Saint

who i called Assanto in my previous collection
which was edited by several well-paid folks & the rat
babble fuck of a poem (“gay cancer”) also passed
thru the young hands of some young editors at a young journal
& even Jeff Shotts’ reading ass didn’t catch
your name double sainted in the middle cause it was
my Black job to know you & put you down right
i who found you in the library’s slow-came, ripped mirror
i who found you again when i found myself bloodbottomed
i whose duty was to give the little sissies & cousins who find
even minute use in my poems the key to the door to the bridge
to the island of your name, your names stranded & waving
from the vanished shore, all you looted from the backroom
by the hooved, perpetual sick t-cells marchin
toward low heavens, all you poets, writers, playwrights
dancers, singers, actors, painters, makers, drag queens
directors ever emerging from the bias dirt your genius
your promise your death your name what little i can do
i fucked up. i’m so sorry Assotto i did what they all do
i pronounced our names wrong i said we looked
like someone else i put your name in a book
& i got the check i name dropped & false flagged
in a single stunt i lied on you & there were white people around
i said i love you for the crowd i prayed at your out-of-print altar
whole time in the wrong god’s tongue, cancelled your angels
i try to conjure the dream where you tell me
chile, it’s alright so i can sleep my name
known & loud & cleared, no ghosts,
ancestor or stranger priding or aiding nor near