On Next Week’s Episode

for Tiffany “New York“ Pollard and Sojourner Truth  

Named after royal gala, delicious  
and empire. Oh no she didn’t. Oh yes  
she did. Ain’t she a baddie, the racket,  
jelly-black at the top of a spiral  
staircase. The leopard chandelier crashes. 
The champagne edges our villain onwards, 
No man can head her! Reality blows. 
A spectacle of girl loses control. 

A jealous chorus rises against her. 
Look at her arm! Fearless in the bellies  
of chrome-hearted men, their smiles sharp with teeth. 
I would’ve begged God to be shaped like that. 
This hand, she oils up time like a backside 
while she washes his fingers with her hair. 
She leans against a column, holds it up 
with her hips, the bull saves the china shop.  

The lady is at home beneath our gaze. 
Ain’t she a woman? She cuts through the walls 
of noise, makes no room for a single sound. 
That’s what a stone mug does to the small talk. 
Black silhouette mounted on her own legs 
charging into the electric daytime, 
stretching her legs bare over a bright field  
of weeding faces, topless under the sun.  

Make way for the lavish work of the heel. 
What a piece of work. How sassy, how fun. 
She is impossible to leave alone. 
There she reigns, spinning straw into gold chains. 

---

Nicholas Goodly, PhD. (@nicholasgoodly) is the author of Star Power (Scribner Press, 2026) and Black Swim (Copper Canyon, 2022). Nicholas is a team member of the performing arts platform Fly on a Wall and writing editor of WUSSY Magazine. Goodly is a finalist for the 2020 Jake Adam York Prize, the runner-up for the 2019 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and recipient of the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Goodly has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker, Boston Review, BOMB, The Poetry Project, Lambda Literary, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere.