Faith

As a boy I believed
in that simple
schoolyard fact

if you stepped
on a crack you

would break
your mother’s
back, I learned

not to have faith
in playground

sayings, but now
as an elder man
so many decades
later I’ve noticed how

fragile her spine
has become.











Deonte Osayande is a writer from Detroit, MI. His books include Class (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2017), Circus (Brick Mantle Books, 2018) and Civilian (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2019). He has represented Detroit at four National Poetry Slam competitions and also managed the Rustbelt Midwest Regional Poetry Slam and Festival for 2014 and 2018. He’s a professor of English at Wayne County Community College. Books at https://www.amazon.com/Deonte-Osayande/s?k=Deonte+Osayande

You can see more of his work in 8.2 and 3.1 and 3.1 and 3.4 and 3.4 and 4.4 and 6.1 and 7.3 and the 2019 Pocket Poems Anthology