Belly, Buttocks, and Straight Spines
For Sister Wangechi Mutu
1
you—enigmatic woman exploding
from clouds and intestines, riverbanks,
kneecaps, veins and horizons
tongues embroidered with eyelashes.
you burn in my throat
i walk your footsteps
singing.
you will never go away.
you kiss your own breath
sleepwalk your eyes
stretch out with mouths
singing your legs.
2
i know you butterfly sweet
your lips taste of the sea
the years dusty with herstory
anticipate light.
your hands riot with pain
collapse in new prayer
touch this western stained
glass where ghosts commit
themselves to military blood.
the bleating hips
surrounding your teeth
wrapped in laughter
blood laughter
brittle noise
seaweed souls
whistling words
whose lil pumpkin are you?
who is your sister?
where is your mama?
our thumbs bleed ashes.
in this travel dust bowl.
3
this is a blues sermon
i think, hanging from
the sky
scratching at the night
where literary brains
demystify deaths,
seen from the angle
of your life,
you turn at the waist
in red and purple confetti
the day stitches up
your python mouth.
you stroll black
beyond the stars
star leaping blk/skinned
woman
seen from the angle
of the camera, you become
the mug shot
mugging a century of
incestuous nipples.
sound ... video ... smell ...
riding death on
its lens
do not feed the animals
they will bite one day.
who speaks
who has spoken
this squat language
where are the vowels
and consonants and diphthongs?
do not feed the animals
they squat in herds
and will bite one day ...
4
red orange breasts
leaking medical
hieroglyphics
bones for sale
immaculate bones for sale
stage right:
Ethiopian bodies
leaking into the ground
stage left:
old clothes unburied
children’s eyes undressed
men’s pants unzipped
women’s slips slipping
standing still backstage
awaiting modernity
master monsters with batons
conducting infernos
is God calling
your limbs to pray
to prey on
a leg, a heart, a skull
an ancestral wind?
your intellect teases us
with zero tolerance for lies,
what’s in a kiss? a smell?
a black woman in white chalk?
a woman sleepwalking
on corners?
what is erotic about
a false step?
yo me espero, yo me espero
i wait for my coming, i wait for my coming.
now as your congregational
knees kneel
now that your birth laughs
a long pause
now that you sigh amid
the pale gaze of thirst,
is that God’s tongue
sliding down your throat?
5
yo sé, lo sé, yo sé
i know, i know it, i know
where is this brown skinned woman going
with her military hair
a bright hysterical flower
eating cake smiling cake
regurgitating cake
yo sé, lo sé, yo sé
i know, i know it, i know
smell the jelly roll woman
squatting in her skin
her bright face eating bluesorrow
smell the doctoral urgency
of her shudderings
female pain profiling
her hunger.
who scrubs the day white
while women fall down
with crucifixions?
can you hear
their birdspirits
strumming gravity?
can you hear
the saxophone
bloodletting the ghosts shout?
can you play this woman
with your fingers?
can you hear
her confetti feet
dancing undeposited rhythms?
now hear this. now hear this.
harpsichord teeth
mothbred smiles
put vaginas in a pill
box for awhile ...
telegraphic buttocks
in bathroom stalls
you are tattooed on our eyes
against the tabloid walls...
mouths anointed with
peacock pricks hey, hey, hey
here i am, here i am
come along take your pick
hey hey hey hey hey hey
listen, listen, listen ...
woman of eye socket-bone
love can wear you down
to a spinal eye-bone
love can make you drink
your own blood
lessen you got a catcher’s mitt
don’t go playing with love. love. blood.
6
silence, silence, ma chère
ca ya te. ca ya te. mi amor
no consecrated birthwaters ... today
no quicksilver blankets ... today
no surgical procedures ... today
just Bantu music with an asterisk beat ... today
just a night shudder under your arms ... today
just a pistol whipped skin ... today
just a lost pulse beat ... today
just a railroad train of butts ... today
just a machete beat against the sky ... today
just some cocked cocks standing at attention ... today
listen, listen, listen. Sister Wangechi
you hear me, don’t you?
and you hear, don’t you, how your
collages dance their armless delirium.
Sister Wangechi you hear me, don’t you
you hear the sacred music
eavesdropping these gallery walls
praising your beauty and bones
in this hallway of lost sermons,
you hear me don’t you
you hear the children running
a furious circle of legs
jumping adolescent rhymes
as they light up streets
with garbage bag balls as they
spill their magical spines
their genius, their surplus
knees on streets.
it is evening and we have
arrived in your arms of
lost seconds
you hear me don’t you
even as you navigate
this halo of ordained voyages
as you uncork the daylight
past these shadows
past our doors left open
and your gentle breath fills
the day with sweet eyelids
of silver
as you arrive at the arc of your name.
Sister Wangechi Mutu
you hear me, don’t you, and
i invoke your name, your
gallery of female matadors
as they come and dance in thunder...(click!)
Notes:
This poem first appeared in Black Renaissance Noire, Winter 2017.
Source: Poetry (April 2023)