goldilocks got a lease now
BY MAYA-GAWONII SHABAZZ-SALEH.
She came in Sunday brunch style / mimosa lips yoga mat gospel
“community equity,” while evicting my auntie
city plan written in her tote bag / Salvation Army resale
her laugh sounded like a deed transfer / ‘eminent domain’ already in her throat
She ate our collards / envisioned soul food ‘fusion’
left a yelp review for the bodega
“spice too heavy, but the vibes immaculate”
now there’s a wine bar where my cousin bought milk on credit
she broke our rocking chair / hashtag vintageaesthetic
splinters in her hundred dollar denim / caption “love this block!”
took a selfie in the ruins / #authentic #blessed
while the porch bent like my daddy’s back
hand-me-down, blessed quilts / cotton-thread lullabies
rustic chic airbnbs / plantation chic
called it hers / there’s prayers stitched in every seam / you sure you want to sleep with these
ancestors?
coming home to a sheriff’s call
the block is renamed after a tree that never grew here
sorry my life didn’t fit the space right / we should be grateful / the hood never looked so clean
goldilocks wields a badge not hers / inherits the bank
sleep sound on our porches painted haint blue
while we stand in the street with rusted keys / watchin history unfold itself in real time
“Fixer Upper” signed in foreclosure ink
Yesterday’s rap muted on a painted-over mural / do you know who was lynched here? / what do
you know of hood memory?
A beer garden invades where gospel once bellowed
they call it progress / call it future
more like insatiety in sundress / trickster in blonde curls
thief in daylight with the law, her spine
us / tired and holy and unhomed
still here / still here / still here
Maya-Gawonii Shabazz-Saleh is a Black, Indigenous, and Egyptian writer, cultural worker, and facilitator whose work lives at the intersection of grief, imagination, and resistance. She writes to compost empire, tend to grief, and root us in the futures we deserve. Whether in the form of poetry, essays, meditations, or ritual guides, her words move with the rhythms of ancestral memory, land, and collective healing. Maya-Gawonii has deep ties to New Orleans, where her family is from, while currently living on Ohlone land, colonially known as Oakland, California. It's here that she tends to her writing and her community. When she isn’t writing or facilitating, she can be found hosting salons, creating spells, or building worlds through storytelling and play. You can find her on Instagram @mayagawoniiwrites.