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?