“How fearful they must be
That they shoot you children”
Sarafina, funeral song lyrics
let’s take the word
scream
scream, screamed,
have screamed,
were screaming,
will scream,
are screaming,
be screamed
as in scream
me a nightmare
as in Soweto, South Africa
in the mid-nineteen seventies
when apartheid reigned king
and a simple scream
travelled
screams of 20000 parents
waded through blood fields
to collect
fallen book bags
and blood-drenched
bones
of children
mowed like errant
turf-grass
screams hallowed the gut
like an elevator in free-fall
in Sesotho hoeletsa: scream
in Zulu ukuthethisa: scream
in Xhosa memeza: scream
the screams
tsunamied
clamored witness
echoed screeches
the entomology
of scream fuses
Middle Dutch scremen ( yell, shout)
and Old Norse skræma (“to terrify; scare”)
as in Dutch schremen (“to shout; yell; cry”)
as in Dutch schreien (“to cry; weep”)
a persistent sound
as in Michael Brown (18) friend-walking
as in Tamir Rice (12) toy gun-park-playing
as in Ma’Khia Bryant (16 ) woman–altercating
as in Adam Toledo (13) police-complying
as in Daunte White (20) girlfriend-driving
as in Breonna Taylor (26) bed-sleeping
as in Atitiana Jefferson (28) house-chilling
as in Stephon Clark (22) grandma’s backyard-standing
as in Botham Jean (26) sofa-ice-cream-eating
as in Janisha Fonville (22) home-chilling
as in Gabriella Navarez (22) driving
as in
To My Formerly-Enslaved Great-grandmother, Missouri, Who, Once Freed, Would Not Speak
Ancestors.com
Ancestors don’t come
To the page
Are missing
Am haunted
By the idea fact
My ancestors were numbers
On a page
Not people
Portrayed lazy despite pyramids
Despite the sphinx
And the White House still white
Black but invisible
Black come silent
Nameless
Silenced
Tongues meaty blue- red organs
Twisted muted
Tongues never tried
Missouri is her given name
Miss her I
Missing ri we
A missing people
Missouri
Name her
Ma misery I’ve named
This big black-boned woman
Great grandma
Missing but conjure-able
Through memories imagined
Not being
people
Her Silence as stunned
Her Silence as dunned
Her Silence as horror
Her Silence as deference
Her Silence as reverence
Her Silence as speech-free
Her Silence as shame
Here hear we give back
Your tongue Missouri
To tell us Tell us
What was it like?
Joanne Godley lives in Mexico City. She is a physician, writer, poet, and a Pacific University MFA student. She is a Meter Keeper in the Poetry Witch Community and an Anaphora Arts fellow in both poetry and fiction. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Mantis, Light, FIYAH, Pratik, and Account, among others. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart prize. Her prose has been published in the Massachusetts Review, the Kenyon Review online, Juked, Memoir, and others. Her second poetry chapbook, Doc.X, was recently published by Black Sunflowers Press. You can find her at Joannegodley.com, on IG at indigonerd, and on X at DrJoanneGodley.
the Decolonial Passage 