Four a.m. My father is out looking for gasoline.

Night at this hour is a tangle of hair,

a bush only the gifted seers can navigate.

This is also where I was radicalized.

On my television screen, I watch Bill Clinton

introduce my people to rations. I watch him

change our rice to another kind.

We begin to import democracy and then,

We are all wandering the night,

Searching for one drop of petrol,

And those lucky to find it will be rewarded

with a day of schooling.

Maybe we can after all resist brain drain.

Four a.m. Another day of tires

and cars charred at the crossroads.

The charcoal sings in the gaping

Mouth of a hot iron, and the steam

Kills everything but the linen.

We learn to live like this.

To make fire from the slivered bark of pinewood.

To slaughter and use all of the animal.

To drink its blood or fry its curdles

So that the weak can be saved

From anemia. We turn to cassava bread

And coffee. We find ways. We survive.

They must not know us.

Four a.m. A child was kidnapped

For ransom and never seen again.

The sun seems to have lost its luster.

The children are not safe and therefore

no one is safe. Nothing is sacred.

Not the holy water nor the frankincense,

not the songs nor the processions,

not the libations poured too late for spirits

we have neglected for so long to feed.

There is always plenty of time

Until there isn’t. We’ve forgotten the time.

We rest our bones for tomorrow,

We wake up and start all over again,

Roaming the streets for petrol at four a.m.

Fires Burning

Too many fires burning at once.

Every commentary on T.V. does nothing

more than stoke the flames.

Paper ignites right around 451 degrees.

Water boils at 212. Do we know

the exact temperature at which

to rescue a man from a burning tire?

Rescue a monk from self-combustion?

Rescue a people from self-immolation?

We who have lost faith

And land and voice and agency,

We who have chained ourselves to olive trees

We who have seen our lakes

Burn up in black smoke and breathed

The air to die, we

Who were told to chop down our trees

And bury our elders with our teeth,

We who heeded the command

and felled our own memories:

We who continue to burn demand only

The kindness of sipped water.

Everywhere, a fire burns.

Every single one of us

is running out of blame.

The Way You Are Loved

You know, the way you enter the house

And the pot had been simmering in wait,

And your mother holds your face in both hands

And you can inhale all the powder fresh scent,

That honeysuckle from her bosom, and you want to live there.

The way your grandfather wraps you in

The cotton of his voice, warms you up in earthy breath,

And feeds you pulp and nectar from the fruits of his labor,

And sits you on his lap to spin you a tale

From a motherland country so far and far away it sounds fantastical,

invented, imagined, a myth like all the others,

a fairytale built out of sea salt and constellations,

The breath of Gods who crossed the oceans.

You know the way this place keeps you bound,

tied to the umbilical cord so you’re never too far away.

In Guinea There is where it all started, where this love was born.

In Guinea Where your parents sit by the fire and send you

Signals in the smoke, and a man to love, a woman to hold,

a child or three or eight and keep that fire burning for all of them

To keep going and find their way back home.