Starr Davis

1) AFFIDAVIT

I, CONFIRM    I have never known any fathers. I do not know this one. Our union, like permission when it is not given, or communion when it is not blessed, was the closest I had come to trusting. The man I called father had fathered me from prison. His apostolic letters ministered to a place inside me that was animal, and wild. When you are Black you want to know what kind of slave your ancestors became. Conquerors or complacent. Killers or just killed. He told me nothing, just a few lines to a story, like a page torn out from an old book. Once he was released, no longer my pastor on paper, he gave me his eyes and then a number he never answered. He has never fathered again. We remain in good counsel as good friends, both of us being so experienced at abandonment the common bread we break is stale.

THUS,              my child knows no father, the way in which my inner child knows no authority, the way in which the petitioner knows no love, the way in which the dead know no place, or a slave knows no name, or these eyes knows no stars, or my spirit knows no truth outside the sun or moon being constant and everything else everchanging. and like Ishmael, who had never known his father outside of rose milk and his single mother’s prayer, my child will too, come to know an inheritance that only comes with a fatherless blessing.

I, CERTIFY the last text received from the petitioner was in blood. The last child support payment was enough for a glass of wine. The last father I had was a false prophet. I am afraid of a second coming.

2) AFFIDAVIT

A sworn statement:

I,          a resident of succulent places both mental and physical, came and appeared, eschatological as a woman pastored by papayas & pendergrass records & predators both flesh and spirit, under penalty and personal knowledge, that few and all ecclesiastical things are correct:

THE, imperial rule of my hips conjured a dream that could not be undreamt; all the men in my life have been mostly theory less Bible; niggas that I could love on accident and leave on purpose however, this one: a consequence of the unhealed in hotel rooms after tangerine suns bleed graceless, took my dream hostage for a night choked my last sweetest memory until I couldn’t taste any remnants of the most fabricated joy I could say I’ve witnessed, he is by a law, the nigga my mama never warned me about because he is the niggas we are born making excuses for; days before I delivered this dream of mine I thought of calling the police but he said me and my little dream would be dead before they found us and so, the drafted petition for domestic violence still etched in my bones is opaque;

THE MOVANT, who is mostly flesh than he is spirit, is not within best interest of any dream(s) of mine

COUNTERPETITIONER’S SUPPORTING AFFIDAVIT

I GAVE BIRTH to many magnolias, some palimpsests, some loose little dream gods on paper, however, this one, because blood and love needs no witness, will tell you she grew inside the bluest bone marrow of unknown desires, as is the grantor of many clemencies against creative crimes I have committed for love.

ONCE, I found her holding court with a cardinal in a tree in deep distance from her and the patio door between them, and when I said come here, the bird thought I meant them and so, it came peeking against the glass at the baby in the morning’s mango sun, we sat there, the baby and I, talking to our ancestor about what has happened and what is to come, and perhaps, the baby blew a kiss at the creature or maybe, she babbled something like a summons, and the bird began to fly in circles, and it dawned on me that she was, or always will be hungry for more than brown breast, and that there is no code created that underwrites the privilege children, ones like her, who have powers to pull birds from trees, strip empaths from narcissists, and subpoena undreamt dreams from their drawers in heaven.

I ATTEST, following a blood test will prove the lawlessness of her existence to be supernaturally urgent.