Three Poems

The True, True Mudda Sally.  Illustration Copyright © 2023 by Akaila Armstrong.

Love in the Time of Circular Chants 

Chant A Psalm A Day… Chant A Psalm A Day…
Chant A Psalm A Day…
An undulating Steel Pulse hosanna

That’s how a Chewa man— 
his ebony courting hands, soft-pressing 
vinyl onto record player, evoked 
a bell and bass reggae of rejoicing 

A Chewa man with his budding locks 
and Bantu eyes, unwitting of 
church bells, Caribbean island steeples 
bristle-broom sweeping the backyard
close to de donkey pen, gently 
past de pigeon coop where 
an old old great woman, strong 
with garlic in her bosom, stood 
flinging chants of get behind me Satan
at bygone plantation overseers— 

That’s how a Chewa man 
with the spin of a single record, charmed 
a bursting young woman’s dead grandmother 
into inter-visiting, into whispering into her ear:

Marry him, I want to be his in-law.

In Conversation with Mudda Sally

Let me charm you with my backside 
gorgeous rise of stretch marks, formed 

as I rushed into puberty and beyond 

See how my pink coral shells couple
with cowrie, curving in to cup me

watch them jiggle with my smile

Notice my belly, smooth. Twice 
cocooned babies in pure cocoa butter

full of child and no darkened prize lines

Don’t hold that against me. Front stria
the proud-new-mole-on-her-right-cheek 

beauty mark—that’s not for me

my splendour lives where I sway
Mudda-curved to guide          or mamaguy 

Shedding the Vernacular

neck shackles             and whips

that’s why Umbundu dimmed crossing the seas
why you is wunna

how Twi hid in Caribbean cane fields
then crossed to birth Geechee amongst blows of cotton fields

how gwine and gine and gurl guh long
sashayed into wid cho bad self 

how we jived back across the ocean to  
hold hands with Amandla! Awethu!

spirits unbowed           shedding the vernacular