hykoo | jookin

gal yo hips b like
2 jook joints onna payday
an i'z ret ta dance

From Chicago poet Regie Gibson's collection Storms Beneath the Skin.

The book is peppered with other hykoos from Gibson, but if you have a little time to invest in his Warnin! Warnin! love song to funk, you won't be disappointed. He opens with more riffing on hips and a shout out to the soul man in the first few stanzas:

good funk
been known to cause young girls
to find out theys got hips to use

and this could turn them into night mamas (uuhh)
with thighs (uuhh)
capable of punking men (good gawd)
into dead religion

But Gibson's not all grit and grind: he gives up this one to his friend Teresa, in i will not know you:

...

i will not know you

until the strange knives of our bodies
have spooned themselves familiar

until I know the rhythm of star
pulsing in your chest

until I've seen your silver sheets of breath

weave themselves into papyrus
that dreams inscribe upon

until I've seen your spirit
rise from flesh

run to meet your truest soulmate

then rush back into your body
as that first trumpet
of sunlight       daylight god-light

blares       blows       paints itself
a magenta jazz across the bosom of the skies

there is no need to penetrate you

i have already
spun universes
from the colors of your eyes

I need me a little Regie tonight. I think, maybe, some nights, every girl does.