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
...