How Do I Abandon the City?
How do I abandon the skeletons buried in my hipbone?/Pick my cells of wilful chromosomes/or chase the rascally child of my wandering to/the den of a famished road?
Styx
The cross is del otro lado, on the northern/side of the forbidden river/Gracias a Dios – it could be saying – /thank you, sweet Virgin, Virgencita/de Guadalupe, here we set our feet/on firm land again.
The mythical bridge
We are the first ones/Who went to Kemet/From the Kingdom of Kush/Without offending our ancestors
I Didn’t Know
I didn’t know/I’d be used to create a fractured dynasty/with no connection/to the land I left
Diaspora
Whenever they’d rise up from there/Jim Crow would beat them down again./Lesson learned; the law is not your friend.
She Presented the Governor of the C0lored Department a Watermelon
It may be imagined that Harriet stayed close/to her roots – remaining in the state of Georgia/after gaining freedom. Yet her quilting patterns /illustrate past family in Benin, West Africa
Indo-Caribbean
Like many/I do not know where in South Asia my ancestors were taken from generations ago/While much was lost in the pages of history/a steady thread that connects me remains
Returning to my mother’s eyes
I would return almost three decades later/to a corner supermarket – my mother’s room/A Telkom telephone booth/hangs outside the walls that contained her childhood.
Ode to Newark
Never would I imagine Newark to be a tourist destination or a dwelling for New Yorkers to squat at for cheaper rents.
What You Left Behind
It cut across your vein that ‘Black Life/ Matters’ you didn’t say it because you know/The future, that you are African/That you are the future.
In the Land of Queen Elizabeth’s Head
“In this country there are opportunities for all,” Boy Kennedy pointed out as he settled on his haunches to inspect the vehicle’s tyres. “Do you see how we now live in the land of Betty’s head?”
Islas
He had tried to fantasize about how his life would have turned out if he had never left Cuba.
Stolen from Africa
We run to and fro in frenzy/like violent waters in a broad river/We bump into each other/like sand particles in a whirlwind.
Jamaican Holiday, 2006
Dance my sister/Dance my spirit round your bones/Break the illiterate silence and contorted sterility of/My 21st century over-Americanized ethnicity, Sister.
Walking the Rain
Doors are rotten mouths/they shout in wooden frames, “Get out/you don’t fit here, what’s a sunny/old girl like you doing in these parts?”
Unmarried Men
Men his age had large pieces of land, and those who had small pieces at least had fertile pieces. Men his age had stable sources of income from employment or entrepreneurship. Most importantly, men his age had children, a wife, and maybe a girlfriend.
Aborted Dreams
When cries/Sprinkled on the feet of tyrants/They were swept away/When bones sailed the Atlantic/Dreams drowned/Into the womb of the sea
the Decolonial Passage 