on naming yourself (a cento)

By Jamila Woods
i caught my breath & called that life 
i cannot be comprehended 
it is better to write 

spit out words into small cans
prepare knives for the cutting 
of orange peels and doorways

i arrive at a space that no longer needs 
autumn or spring, this forest 
of telling each other the truth

where they suck the bones of the alphabet
over a floor of rubble & gravel & ashes

mouths wide open, we drank 
we became the forest
drunk with sky

we felt awful after parting 
from ourselves
played hide-and-seek
begging to be liked
among the leaves

i turned myself into myself 
and was clean water, prayer
love colored with iron and lace 

i wrote my name upon the water
i stood proudly at the helm
the names of things 
hadn’t had time to stick
another face going under the waves

if you don’t know 
who you are 
your story cannot be pronounced

i have much to learn 
from my errors
day by day i am a student
i step deeper into myself

this is a large voice
when you rise through the dead leaves
we will remember you

Notes:

This cento is composed of text from 11 poems by the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winners.

Source poems include:

"I Should Like to Fall in Love with a Burro Named Saturnino" by Sandra Cisneros, published in Woman Without Shame (Knopf, 2022)
“Shard #41” by CAConrad, unpublished
“Testimonial” by Rita Dove, published in On the Bus With Rosa Parks (Norton, 1999)
“Ego Tripping” by Nikki Giovanni, published in Ego-tripping and Other Poems for Young People (Lawrence Hill, 1973)
"Handful of Gravel" by Juan Felipe Herrera, unpublished
“Summer and the City” by Angela Jackson, published in Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry (Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, 2022)
"Liberation Narratives" by Haki Madhubuti, published in Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems: 1966-2009 (Third World Press, 2009)
“Meditation During the Sufferings and Deaths of Others” by Sharon Olds, published in Balladz (Knopf Doubleday, 2022)
“This is Not a Small Voice” by Sonia Sanchez, published in Wounded in the House of a Friend (Beacon Press, 1995)
“The Writer’s Song” by Patti Smith, published in Auguries of Innocence (Ecco, 2005)
“Sight Lines” by Arthur Sze, published in Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, 2019)

Download a color-coded PDF showing the source authors here.

Copyright Credit: Jamila Woods, "on naming yourself (a cento)" from the program for the 2022 Pegasus Awards, celebrating the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winners: Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Patti Smith, Angela Jackson, Haki Madhabuti, Sandra Cisneros, Arthur Sze, CAConrad, Sharon Olds, Sonia Sanchez, and Juan Felipe Herrera. Chicago, IL: Poetry Foundation, October 2022.
Source: Poetry Foundation, 2022