NUOLA AKINDE
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POETRY

seven hundred islands

8/10/2022

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Originally published April 2020 in the
Poetry in a Time of Virus 

​I come from a long line of aching 
throats
stained glass words
shattered and swallowed
heartache that strips you bare
Mouth                open                       wide 
As the full-figured moon

These long fingers
They are from mare-riders
pill poppers              birth-workers          soil sifters                joy seekers               
women whose dreams were 
too big
for their time
We tried to show them to the men we loved
And they kept them 
In sweaty palms. Let them spill out through the creases of their tightly closed fists 
we tucked our pain into our ovaries
gave a small dose to each little ovum
hoping to spread it out over generations
Collective amnesia

i come from a long line of
babies who nurse until your breasts bleed
and who cry 
all
night
Great Goddesses
who will only be appeased by the humbling of a man
who cradles infant in warm brown hands
takes the hairy knuckles that might have shattered jaws
Or dreams, or dignity
and instead
caress
a baby's crooning lips
cooing along with Sun Ra

Another day I will tell the story of our resilience
another day, we will celebrate
the ways from no way
The light hearts on the scales of Ma’at
the chapped lips coated in honey by Osun
but tonight I will tell you that she died several times over
and planted one small suffering in the egg who became my mother
who planted one small suffering in the egg who became me
who planted one small suffering in the eggs who became my daughters
three
​

My mother taught me
There is an ache 
For every island


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Notes on a monday

4/15/2019

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​Thursday: You collected rock after rock and argued over shells. You heard your ancestors calling you home to the great city of hills.To villages on the sand. How you danced and danced to the songs that only you could hear.

Saturday: I ran my fingers along the creases of your fevered brow. Spreading my love onto your skin like butter on warm banana bread. I assure myself that you will remember how our bodies were stitched together, boat and anchor, two heartbeats, so very connected. My truest loves, it is you I will come for each lifetime. We stood together the first days of Ile Ife, we sailed across oceans, climbed from heaven to earth and back again. I can see that you remember, giggling together like sisters, guiding one another as elders, our souls have danced together since sand and soil were poured from a conch shell as we descended the golden rope from the spirit realm, into this raucous and exhilerating marketplace of life.

Sunday: I spend the day in the rain, smiling at strangers and helping them learn that mint cannot be tamed (it must take after you!) and that moles and groundhogs have a right to a maddening hunger just as we do. After work I run to the grocery store for a few supplies, milk dripping from my breasts in the same pattern as the hale falling outside. Kind strangers pretend not to notice. I zip up my coat and continue shopping. 

I love you, I love you, I love you. When the days come that my lessons evade you or my love frustrates you I pray we’ll still feel the truth of each other, with the sureness that you know the names of each tree you pass. The ebbs and flows of your moods will be a reminder that I taught you the phases of the moon. These affirmations are spells my love. Our lullabies are incantations, ancient itself. Like every great mystic and hero, you’ve had the magic within you all along. Our rituals grew across the great sea in red clay. 

Monday: There is more work than I have heart for and I am anxious for Peace. My feet are tired from the weight of this heart. This is the kind of night where I wish I could peek at the ending, just to make sure it all turns out alright. You are patient with me, even as you demand as much of me as I can give, and then a bit more, a bit more, a bit more. Your laughter makes me laugh to spite myself. Your crying steadies me. It is not my turn to fall apart. This moment belongs to you.
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Iyami aje

12/18/2018

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Today they do not burn us at the stake
Better to watch us
Putting our juju in tampons and
Throw it into landfills
Better we poison ourselves and our daughters with fear 
Shame
Sugar and dreams that are too 
Small

They do not burn us
Better to come as lovers sweetly asking
For a bit more,
A taste
A nibble
Of our souls and self respect

We do not hear our foremothers
There is not enough silence in our minds to decipher their messages, 
Though they come,
In the sunlight
And croaking trees

Can you hear her?
That note in the frantic cicada song
Or the drumbeat of 
The woodpecker?
Did you see her?
She called for you again in the 
Glow of the last full moon
With the early light of day 
She sat three crows on a crooked branch
Past, present, future 

Around this sacred fire
I will gather my clothes
And
baring teeth and nails 
rip them into nine long strips
making a skirt every shade of afterbirth 
and full moon
And charcoal
spinning like Oya’s tornadoes
And hurricanes
graceful as a Sufi dancer 

voice a cacophony of thunder 
 
As I climb out of my self 
Borrowed body shed like snakeskin
I call on 
Moremi and  
Yaa Asantewa  
Joan of Arc and
Mary Magdalene 
Sandra Bland and 
Nikki Enriquez
Fannie Lou Hamer and 
Auntie Mae 
Sojourner
Truth and 
the unknown and unnamed
mothers of the night 
plentiful as starlight 
bound wrists and ankles
burned and battered

​
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SHRAPNEL

12/15/2018

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Tonight 
i bound my breasts with words so tightly knitted
that i could scarcely breathe
through the rusted yarn
​made of fraying thoughts
hopes

tonight
i wish i could taste the final breath on a warriors lips
kiss her bleeding mouth
Anoint myself in her tears
and have her story
melt across my palette like 
sweet butter

Is there a god who carries wounded souls in an empty flask?
do they, like the living,
grow weary of the clutter and the stench
and wish instead for a plastic shield 
made of ancient graves
and tar-colored blood?

​are they also frightened of freedom?

what happens when all hope is swept away on salty breezes
or the dust
or a moth’s wings?
who are we when the weak can no longer sing?

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Silk Stockings

8/28/2018

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(written in honor of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church)

Graceful and tireles
As moonlight on rivers
​
Silk stockings soft as
The petals of the sweetest magnolia
Hair, blouse and skirt
Freshly pressed
Crisp as a new day
Stretched across the sky
By the Almighty's own hand

You've strived for salvation
On picket lines
And picnic blankets
Organizing your congregations
And kitchens
With the same tenderness
Stitching the wildest dreams
of your mothers
To the civil rights
Of your daughters

Your nimble hearts dance between
Birthday celebrations
And death commemorations 
Fierce resistance to supremacy 
Tireless love for your children
Your children's children
All of God’s children​

Your agile minds penned prayers
Quilting scraps of bravery
That whispered
Then chanted
None of us is free
Until all of us are free

The Sun himself
Seemed to shine
That the redemption of the American soul
Lies on realizing the sacred dignity
Of all her people

Sisters of Ruth and Ruby
A woman knows that the God who lives
In the Sunday sermon
Also lives in the hands of the mother
Who caresses her child's furrowed brow
And quiets her own drumming heart to
Tend to the future. 
Sensing that tenacious hope
Is the greatest risk our hearts can take

Only you
Could take the righteous fury,
The waves of sadness
And carefully fold them
Like a cotton handkerchief,
Or tattered flag
Placing them into a box
Of dignity,
Respectability
Wrapping them in patience white as a bride's veil
Tying it with the ribbons of song
and sacrament
Presenting the world with the insistence
That we
Shall
Overcome

Today we shall not speak of sacrifice
A woman's heart carries her own
Just as she recalls the
Joyous burden that was
carried by Mother Mary

A woman's body knows them
Just as she knows the
Roads she walked and marched
For the glimmer of liberty
On the horizon
Or across the bridge
Voices lifted, spreading through the sky
Like a dove’s flight
Heads high above the rooftops
Backs long, straight and brown
As the most wondrous mahogany
Next of kin to Sojourner and Shirley
As carefully crafted as your mama's favorite Sunday hat

It is in our giving
That we remind ourselves
That each of us
Is a child baptized again
And again
By the most pure and endless love
Our souls, inextricably bound to the
Holy Spirit

So you blossom
And share your gifts
Whatever they may be
Like ripe peaches in summertime

For the days are many when you were
Unseen
Unheeded
And un-kept by the world
But within these walls
you will always
be wanted
You will always
Be loved
You will always be known
As Divine,
Beautiful
Daughters of the King





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Earth & ash

7/18/2018

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Have you ever seen blood so red?
Earthy as Idanre clay
Thick as a cloud draped sunset,
And the coils of your hair


This is truth
The breath of Oludumare
Perfection balanced on the edges of a spinning top
Melodious disaster
familiar song in the distance
Words steeped with meaning lost
Made thinner with the passing of each ancestor
How do you translate a song that has been forgotten
just as it is about to begin?


This is the longing place
Pacing
Aching
The empty space that only god can fill
Radiates
And shimmers
Strums every molecule of your being
Here, the charcoal hand of Obatala kneads you
Molds you into bowl
Kiln
Fire
Have you ever seen lightning blister stone into glass?
Oshun stretches the strands of your DNA
Threading you along fingers of coral,
amber,
Sargasso,
oak
Knitting grains of sand into nets
that hold starlight
And pulse like jellyfish through the infinite


Have you ever seen eyes like these?
Bright as honey
Round as the fullest moon
Sweet as chestnuts
Sparkling like newly whispered promises
And answered prayers

​
​Sometimes in my darkest moments
When my thoughts are all midnights of worry
And siren songs
I return here to you
becoming mantra of sky and brackish water
You are the deepest of my days
And my longest nights
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Crickets

3/5/2016

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I want to consume you
I want to take the sound of your rasping, panting 
breath
and swallow it into me 
gulping.
lapping.
until my mouth is filled with birdsong
and my teeth are the black sky
holding the music 
like a velvet bag
cradles a jewel


I want to buzz 
and tingle 
like a cicada
while every pore of my body 
seeps water
that tastes like the ocean
and smells like sex
and sand


I want to break through your decency 
and modesty 
like my teeth seep slowly into the soft, hot, red
tomatoes of August


I want to turn our bodies into 
raspberry sun tea
melted together
by friction and fire
and warm summer sunlight
I want you.

​
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"The list", or things that make sense in a world full of madness and beauty

11/17/2015

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Here are the things I understand:
  • laughter, the delirious kind that happens in the middle of the night at sleepovers, or the kind that makes your stomach hurt, or causes you to snort, or pee your pants. most especially, the kind that makes other people laugh.
  • sunlight, particularly through clouds right as you walk underneath them, or through thin sheets of rain in the summer time, or gleaming off of snowbanks so brightly you can hear them sparkle
  • children, their love and resilience, their fragility, and bravery. their wonder. the pure aching miracle of them
  • my ability to take miracles for granted
  • fresh squeezed orange juice
  • the crispy edges of pancakes, cooked in coconut oil, dipped in maple syrup. best on a chilly, Saturday morning in February.
  • childbirth
  • miscarriages
  • grandmothers who pass away in old age. the surprising coldness of embalmed skin.
  • cold water on naked skin, freckles, goosebumps, beauty marks, stretch marks.
  • lollipop lipstick
  • kindness so small it can barely be seen, except by angels standing in corners
  • ghost stories, not the content, but the compulsion- the need- to tell them, and hear them.
  • sex; the urge and the act, not biology
  • reincarnation
  • friendship so beautiful and daring, it splits your heart open like a good book, and makes you known to yourself.
  • wildflowers
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Spreading democraTIC PROSPERITY

11/4/2015

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there is a red shoejust there
half buried beneath the sand
can you see it?
dirty,
barely the size of my left hand.
whoever he was,
I bet his mother thought his laughter weaved a halo
around his head
I’ll bet she longs to feel her body throbbing with deep primal agony,
as he enters the world anew
I’ll bet she laughed with him
and sometimes scolded him harshly,
needlessly
I’ll bet she misses him

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SHADOWS

10/25/2015

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When I die an untimely death
​
Slick ice beneath black tires
Deep silence splitting my ears
White doves scattering
like snow flakes.
When I am stuck between this earthly realm
and the next life
It is you I will haunt
I will sit with you as you mourn me,
holding their cheeks,
singing their lullabies
cracked whispers, flaring tempers, pores seeping with
aching memory
It is you I will seek
I will pick out your voice from the hundreds in my mind
and come to you
I will beg you to hear me,
in quiet, tickling tones
calling to you in a flock of geese
summer raindrops
fireflies
and you will hear me
I will lay with you and try to make my soul
small enough to fit into your dreams
melting sweetly into them like brown sugar in black coffee
invisible
inextricable
I will tuck myself into your pants pocket
place dandelions in your path
guide your hands in braiding his hair
and your voice in telling her stories
of me
and you will hear my laugh in the strangest places
like elevators
hospital hallways
and the centuries when
full moons and leap years intersect
When I die
I will marry you once more
Stitch myself to you
eternally
in the darkness between life and death
there are no phone bills, dirty dishes, or broken windows
and as my last breath draws me into the netherworld
my memories will be left behind along with my blood stains
on the car seats
And all that will matter
all that I will have
is the unbending truth that you and I
you and I
youandI
and we are both reborn
you will remember me
I will be the old man
sitting on the park bench
with cheeks that smell like sandalwood,
or cigars
or vanilla
fretting with the buttons on my coat
holding out the green balloon
you thought you’d lost forever

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