gossypiin

Ra Malika Imhotep

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781643620183
• eBook ISBN: 9781636280264
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

This harvest of poems is inspired by the plant medicine latent in Gossypium Herbeceum, or Cotton Root Bark, which was used by enslaved Black women to induce labor, cure reproductive ailments and end unwanted pregnancies. Through an arrangement of stories, secrets and memories experienced, read, heard, reimagined and remixed, gossypiin reckons with a peculiar yet commonplace inheritance of violation, survival and self-possession. In this way, Ra Malika Imhotep invites us to lean in and listen good as the text interrupts the narrative silence around sexual harm, sickness, and the marks they make on black femme subjectivity.

Within these pages, the poet is joined by a “sticky trickster-self” named Lil Cotton Flower who tells of their own origins and endings in the Black vernacular traditions of the griot and the gossip. Interspersed throughout the collection, Black feminist wisdoms and warnings meld with the poets own yearnings and Lil Cotton Flower’s tall tales.

Gossypiin is an offering towards the holding and healing of Black beings that exceed the confines of their own bodies.

FlowerI ain’t know when I laid down on the floor crying out for my Grandmothers to come in and help me in this healing that Francis Taylor was classified as a breeder. I ain’t know her daughter, my Great-Grandmother, Susie Moody narrowly escaped forced sterilization by following her oldest daughter Rebecca up north to the apartment they all shared. I ain’t know about the nervous breakdowns and maladaptive coping mechanism in my blood. I just knew I needed to hear their voices, to feel their hands.

endurance

I am dry

under the body

busy working

it’s way to some place

unfamiliar

yet somehow

inside me.

Hear me,

the wet body

is not mine

it belongs

to the other.

See me—

passive opening,

mouthing anguish,

dry and elsewhere.

My body

down there,

the body

over me

raining its salt

into my mouth.

A taste

I enjoy

to spite

the ache

the hermit-woman takes a lover

after gayl jones

i am a woman/generous/with place and things/stingy/with time and soul/except for this/stranger

and so it goes/ i throw my flesh/ into your mouth,

watch you chew/ with wide-eyes

most times i am thrilled/ others i forget

to breathe/and in/this stifled/ presence/ i leave/ my body

as i’ve/ been trained/to do/and wait

for you/ to finish/so that i/ may rest/again

Some nights talking to god and talking to pussy bleed into each other.

I grope my self in search of ovaries and sometimes feel something

but most nights it’s no groping just a laying on of my own hands

tryna conjure all the sorrow

out the song

somebody forgot to tell somebody something

“Particularly the women. What women say to each other and what they say to their daughters is vital information, that’s education. It’s not gossip, it’s not girl talk, it’s information . . . And they either have to discover it for themselves, and through incredible amounts of trauma, or they have to invent themselves . . .”

—Toni Morrison in conversation with Ntozake Shange (1978)

5

What do you do when the blood stops early?

4

When i become this weeping needing thing? This deep breathing wet-faced monster of my self? What kinda swamp i don’ dug myself out of? How i get here? How this hurt here? How a chest tighten itself into pumped fist?

3

Who taught me how to love half empty? In what language did i first learn to plead for closeness? How did Grandma Sarah spell out her lonely? What kinda pot she cook it in? Did my mother watch? Might there be a recipe book up underneath the bed?

2

Where do we go to hum out these bones? Is there a stretch of muscle that sings in the right key? How i’mma get there? When i’mma get my license? Will they let me rest tonight?

1

What sound you supposed to make when it’s over? How did you know you’ve arrived? What else might surrender mean? How often do you change the sheets?

amenorrhea

spirits smack talk up

and down my spine asking

for shit in languages

I can’t hear yet

& all I can offer is a wet face.

the wound burrows itself

across the mound they mark

“reproductive”

& the mirror prays too, my breast held

out like communion—take, eat, this

is the body broken for you

& I wish it was that easy,

I’ve pretended often

a mouth latch on

to suck and I’ll moan out

some sort of mantra, some thing

they need

& they leave or get boo’d off

the stage this bed has become

& somehow I’m standing there holding

the broom that pushed ’em and feeling

satiated ’cept for the reflection

of my own shea buttered hands

offering up nipples the circumference

of a sunflower’s heart

petals wilting

& there can’t be nothin’ honey

...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Contents
• Gossypium herbaceum
• What We Gathered Here to Do
• Sow
• Seedling
• Flower
• Fruit
• Harvest
• Credits
• Gratitude
• Chorus
• Back Cover