Billie Holiday VS The United States

by Danielle P. Williams

---

this strange fruit ain’t so strange no mo’
it predictable and poison 
it sitting in the pit of my stomach 
silently boiling 
over and ain’t nobody listening out for my pain
but ain’t no stranger to that neither
truth is 
we all Billie
we all broken somewhere 
we all too damn 
proud to admit it 
eventually our vices become our admittance 
truth is
I know southern trees 
I been called nigger 
I been too proud to cry 
I been a Black woman with a capital B 
and I’ll always be that 
until I’m 
nothing 
Me
and
Billie 

Billie –
O, Billie 

they took all of you 
til the very end 

ankle shackled to hospital bed
body rotting in it’s own misery
And ain’t that 
America?
Billie Holiday vs. The United States 
The United States vs. Me
vs. us poets trying to assemble beauty from withered bones 
vs. every nigga who ever dreamt of living free
who ever loved way too much only

to be given nothing in return 

And Billie,

with a voice like hurt and fresh gardenias

filling the world of her fragrance

died a prisoner to her own song

And I suspect I will go just the same

---

Danielle P. Williams is a Black and Chamorro writer and spoken-word artist from Columbia, South Carolina. She has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets 2021, with fellowships from Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Watering Hole, and The Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers. She completed her B.A. in Arts Administration at Elon University in 2016, and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at George Mason University in 2021. Her poems were selected for the 2020 Literary Award in Poetry from Ninth Letter. You can find her work in Juked Magazine, ANMLY, Hobart, Flypaper Lit, Barren Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently based in Los Angeles. For more, visit http://daniellepwilliams.com/