|
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
0 Comments
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. 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 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? (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 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 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. Here are the things I understand:
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 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 |
Archives
August 2022
Categories© Nuola Akinde and nuolaakinde.weebly.com, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nuola Akinde and nuolaakinde.weebly.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. |
RSS Feed
