Deep English
By Tsitsi Ella Jaji
Walk through the edges,
circumvent the center.
(Circle the square, so to speak).
Having parted ways with the crossroad,
take each path offered, and unite into
a thousand thousand fragments.
Stutter in the tongues of men and angels.
Spit out the honorific truth:
rave stark as a mad woman.
Destitute, discover the ancestral home
and sit down to fast sumptuously
at the high table.
Comforted, stare into the mirror
that divided all these years,
the mirror that melts in the mouth.
Now, speak clearly.
Copyright Credit: Tsitsi Ella Jaji, "Deep English" from Beating the Graves. Copyright © 2017 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Press. Reprinted by permission of University of Nebraska Press.
Source: Beating the Graves (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)