This Day Acts Like… full poem attached.
Kay Cook holds a BA in Sec. Ed. , M.Ed. in Special Education; certification as a a School Psychologist. Her writing focuses on miscommunication due to racial, cultural and mental health differences, including systemic racism.
See attached
A glitch in the website won't allow for adding dates after 2016. This piece was written and first recited on January 20, 2021 at the Inauguration of Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris.
PUBLISHED in 2018 by Tupelo Quarterly–https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/learning-to-eat-the-dead-usa-by-maria-abegunde/
for Diamond Reynolds
When they invite you to dinner, say yes.
Arrive early, choose the chair closest to the door.
Pay attention to who sits where.
Pay attention to who drinks what.
When they lay your lover’s body face down,
Do not vomit when your host saws off his head.
Do not cry when the guests crack his fingers and elbows.
Look as they turn him over to lick the back of his neck.
When they ask if you’d like to try some, politely refuse.
Instead, pour your glass of water over his feet.
Wash between his toes. Massage what remains of his heels.
Do not look at his knees which someone has started to suck.
When the hosts walks towards you with a slice of cranium,
Insists that you taste its peculiar pungency, and says
I have eaten Black man brains a million times, but never like this…
Decline, sit still, breathe, pray, pray. Pray.
Pay attention to who stops eating when you do this.
Pay attention to who whispers to whom.
Pay attention to who picks up the wine bottles.
Pay attention to who slips the steak knives into their laps.
When a guest offers you more water, ignore her.
Pour olive oil over his feet. Kiss them gently.
Place your cheek against his soles. Listen to the lesson on how
To be awake even while sleeping.
Only when they bring you his heart do you accept.
Demand to hold the whole organ.
Place it on your plate.
Do nothing as they wait for you to eat.
Pick up his heart. Rub it against your face. Rub it against your neck.
Feel its weight on your shoulders.
Take your knife and cut a small chunk from the center.
Rest it against your chest. Let it dissolve into your own.
Put what you have cut into your mouth.
Caress the shards of metal with your tongue.
If you chew, your anger will poison you.
Swallow nothing, not even a piece of skin.
Maria Hamilton Abegunde is an ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition, a Reiki Master with a focus on the recovery and healing of memory from sentient bodies. Her research and creative work focus on transgenerational trauma and community healing through contemplative practices. Excerpts from The Ariran’s Last Life, a Middle Passage memory-work, have been published in Let Spirit Speak!, Best African American Fiction and The Kenyon Review. Essays have been featured in The Journal for Liberal Arts and Sciences, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and nocturnes. Excerpts from Learning to Eat the Dead were selected as a COG poetry finalist. She is a Cave Canem, Ragdale, Sacatar, and NEH fellow. She directs The Graduate Mentoring Center and teaches African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.
The poem was written "for Diamond Reynolds," the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who was shot by a police officer in his car at a traffic stop in the Twin Cities in 2016 (the officer was acquitted of manslaughter)--Diamond and her daughter were in the car.
I prepared the package
for my friends in the states
the dangling earrings woven
into half moons black pearls glinting
like an eye in a storm of tight spirals
the baskets
sturdy, also woven
brown cowry shells shiny
intricate mandalas
shaped by calloused fingers
Inside the basket
a message:
Wear these earrings
to parties
to your classes and meetings
to the grocery store, the corner store
and while riding the bus
Store jewellery, incense, copper coins
and curling letters like this one
in this basket
and when others ask you
where you got this
you tell them
they’re from the Marshall Islands
show them where it is on a map
tell them we are a proud people
toasted dark brown as the carved ribs
of a tree stump
tell them we are descendants
of the finest navigators in the world
tell them our islands were dropped
from a basket
carried by a giant
tell them we are the hollow hulls
of canoes as fast as the wind
slicing through the pacific sea
we are wood shavings
and drying pandanus leaves
and sticky bwiros at kemems
tell them we are sweet harmonies
of grandmothers mothers aunties and sisters
songs late into night
tell them we are whispered prayers
the breath of God
a crown of fushia flowers encircling
aunty mary’s white sea foam hair
tell them we are styrofoam cups of koolaid red
waiting patiently for the ilomij
tell them we are papaya golden sunsets bleeding
into a glittering open sea
we are skies uncluttered
majestic in their sweeping landscape
we are the ocean
terrifying and regal in its power
tell them we are dusty rubber slippers
swiped
from concrete doorsteps
we are the ripped seams
and the broken door handles of taxis
we are sweaty hands shaking another sweaty hand in heat
tell them
we are days
and nights hotter
than anything you can imagine
tell them we are little girls with braids
cartwheeling beneath the rain
we are shards of broken beer bottles
burrowed beneath fine white sand
we are children flinging
like rubber bands
across a road clogged with chugging cars
tell them
we only have one road
and after all this
tell them about the water
how we have seen it rising
flooding across our cemeteries
gushing over the sea walls
and crashing against our homes
tell them what it’s like
to see the entire ocean level with the land
tell them
we are afraid
tell them we don’t know
of the politics
or the science
but tell them we see
what is in our own backyard
tell them that some of us
are old fishermen who believe that God
made us a promise
some of us
are more sceptical of God
but most importantly tell them
we don’t want to leave
we’ve never wanted to leave
and that we
are nothing without our islands.
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a citizen of the Republic of the Marshall Islands that gained independence after the US had used the Bikini Atoll to test nuclear weapons. She is an activist, university teacher, and poet. Here she points in part to the continuing "free association" of the Marshall with the US Federal Government.
Bending, I bow my head
and lay my hands upon
her hair, combing, and think
how women do this for
each other. My daughter’s hair
curls against the comb,
wet and fragrant— orange
parings. Her face, downcast,
is quiet for one so young.
I take her place. Beneath
my mother’s hands I feel
the braids drawn up tight
as piano wires and singing,
vinegar-rinsed. Sitting
before the oven I hear
the orange coils tick
the early hour before school.
She combed her grandmother
Mathilda’s hair using
a comb made out of bone.
Mathilda rocked her oak wood
chair, her face downcast,
intent on tearing rags
in strips to braid a cotton
rug from bits of orange
and brown. A simple act
Preparing hair. Something
women do for each other,
plaiting the generations.
