Today

Today I will not drink
I will ignore the calls of water girls
carrying plastic sachets of used fluids
hoisted high on trays
seesawing on the tops of their small heads.

And as their calls of water drift down through the city
and I hear, in the sway
echoed by the fall of their flip-flops,
the weight of their birth canals
narrow and loaded with the lust of old men
and children too big to pass into life
I vow, today,
to ignore my gluttonous organs
who profess thirst and threaten me with bodily harm
like a father or a husband
if I do not water them.

Today my bladder will be like a cow's empty udder.
DRY.

I will walk today
in a new, yellow boubou
trimmed in the colors of water and the harmattan.

The slow-motion cascade of urine,
trickling in rhythms full of sound and scent
offensive and fleeing
from the hole in my bladder,
will not give me away today.

My organs may lock in protest,
they may shut down in despair,
but for Today,
I will be dry and welcomed.

Deliver Me From The Hands of Strange Children

On the Day of the Dead,
On the day we plead on their behalf,
he naked me,
stripped my body of its deluded sense of sovereignty
in front of carved saints, elegantly stoic
cloistered in their own uselessness

he naked me
in front of bands of soldier boys, spellbound and spoiled,
wearing their sisters’ dresses and their mothers’ wigs
their necks encased in feather boas and forest paint
their waists jeweled with the feces of cold war arsenals

he naked me
in a church garden wild with perfume
under a bush plum tree
the kind we make our Christmas pudding from

he naked me
as I quietly pleaded to the holy queen
as he told me her ears were stuffed with cassava leaves
and her son’s many failures
as he pissed his discontent in my face

he laid me beneath a neighboring mango tree
magnificent in its promise to shield
and he used a bayonet like a crochet hook
pushing through my vagina
in search of hidden bounty
in search of buried cell phones and soiled cash
pulling from its walls only prayer beads
christened by frightened menses

for such a gross disappointment
he placed mary’s head
machete-sharpened and faceless
in there instead

Victory Threads

For Sojourner

I heard her friends laugh at her
that laugh which is square
that stops at points
never to wonder
only to breathe in
base expulsions of uncurious air

she had proclaimed
in a combined fit
of wistfulness and swaggering insolence
she had had combs in Abidjan
with names—
Akissi, Ahou, Abla, Ama, Adjoua—
who understood the temperament
of each day’s hair story
who could dress your head
while weaving choruses of victory threads in your brain
preparing you to meet the day
haughty and wholly armored.

The Hymn of the Bow

For Mustapha

when you told me that story
not as a griot but as my lover to be
as an act of enchantment
to erase with royal tales and ordinary history
my weighted displeasure
with our place
the Africa that quells with a sorcerer’s ease
the magic of the heart
your voice tied to the voice of Balla Fasseke
seamless and connected
disrobed my anger
drew out its poisonous pit
and I rose like Sundiata
full of thirst and tight
ready to receive your epic as I would your body.