A week later...

And so where have I been?

Last week was extremely hectic for me. I was trying to piece together words for a presentation and also trying to organize something else, (I have forgotten what) but it seemed like my forever was near. I did not want to write poetry or read poetry or even.... Here I am, a week later, feeling bad for not keeping up to my promise/goal. I don't have seven poems to make up for all of this lost precious time, but I have a few...

True story...simply that

Passing Winds

I lost my big toe nail

On a Sunday afternoon

Sliced in half

By a falling blackboard

Pushed by the passing wind

My sister nursed

The green and pale skin

With a white napkin

Salty bubbly water

Pierced my wound

The steam in my screams

Called the hot winds

To serve me with cool warmth

My Well Runs Dry

Aku and I

raced with empty buckets

to the well

while crickets stretched limbs

and the sun cracked from its shell

My metal bucket

half empty

balanced on my neck

My arms stretched

to guard what remained

We didn’t race back

A mountain of clothes

laid waiting

My grandmothers garden

Grew thirsty.

Ampe is a game little girls like me used to play in Accra. It was so much fun because it involved several people. Sometimes I made my greatest enemies from playing ampe: simply because they had “shot” me out of the game at its early stages. I can’t play ampe in America, whatever that means.

Ampe

girls jumping

kicking tan sands

into the air

they clap

pa pa pa

singing songs

of home



Channeling my inner African? NO! I was simply retelling observations of my lifestyle. I didn't live in a jungle...it's just similar to how New Yorkers (some) live with rats/mice/roaches :Each region to its own.

Wild life

in Accra,

I shared my bed

with a yellow lizard

and ate with a baby cockroach

I ate my sweets with red

soldier ants

and sold my garbage

to the bald wet vultures

I complained to the bats

their bite marks

impressed on the indian almond

a green snake watched

my grandmother’s crops

grow

and fed them to the crows.