TONGUES AS CASTING NET

- Root Work Journal - Navigating the Ocean - Volume 1, Issue 2

ON learning america’s english Pt. ii (Spoiled Child)

i.

I was a house once, full of stories
some crafted for this american dream
others a bitterleaf pupil to the english of Saturday morning cartoons,
trying to translate the catacomb accents of my parents’ tongues 

abounandje à bwéti nyame’ i amerique yan da

Translation:
You have become so American now
or
deport all of that tribe from your mouth
you talk like them now / you walk like them now
no more of that Yaoundé stuck in my teeth,
now everything tastes like the steps to un-birthing a country
which is to say america has a way of killing everything it comes from
a passport can feel like a smooth stamped death sentence
when american sky is amnesia
forgetting is the decaying body
the stories smuggled beneath our tongues 
are just the ways a memory fights to stay alive

ii.

I learned early how to fold myself into a flag
stitch myself a newly striped name - a new set of stars -
I was able to pass through customs, but my tongue had to stay behind

iii.

I remember being too Black for Africans & too African for Blacks
but all a meaningless story in America
my tongue is thick in chemically-enhanced amendments
my tongue is wishing for a white picket flesh while living with Section-8 bones
a muddied body not fit for chandeliers 
which is to say that you can be a house,
but America has a way of reminding you that you are not a home
you are only the debris / the aftermath / the constant reconstruction / the projects

iv.

they will say that you don’t belong in the country
that doesn’t even belong to itself

v.

oh, america

show us your papers- who documented your dream?
can the attack dogs still smell the unalienable right from my brittle & marginalized skin?
does the bullet care which side of the ocean I am from?
will it not swim thru my body all the same?
will it not try to make a home of me until my name is but a salted exit wound
& a country spills from my body like a memory?

vi.

my tongue is a shoreline patiently awaiting for my return
I wonder if I would still feel
like a stranger in my own house

Translation:

I just hope to become a language
that is always worth coming home to.

A poetry Series

- Drunk In A Midnight Choir

Prettiest Teeth

nice guys are wolves in

well-tailored wool. Their sartorial & polite 

teeth, hide the most flesh

stained in a respectable death

• the kind, where I will kill you 

with my kindness - my soft

smile sharp as a carnivorous howl

ready to make a home out of

any thing willing to be the hoofed

& the blood. To be a transmutation

of disappearances, 

I will convince you 

are crazy, that straightjacket is

better than truth: love by

gaslight - tip the oil, spark the fire

I will burn the entire forest

just to hide the evidence

of clawed tracks soiling your 

earth, until you are just a throat

full of ash, dancing in the gray. 

I wear my silence so loudly

my wool is just a costume of hushes

I look the part but, but mostly act.

The part that is most delicious 

is I don’t ever see myself further 

than this ache; than the stories beneath the bruise;

than this addiction to pretty 

it still hurts, no matter how soft the blow is.

I am what I eat —

guess that makes me a bruise too.

YESTERDAY YOU TRIED TO CALL THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR TO FIGURE OUT IF YOU HAVE THE SAME FATHER

- Winter Tangerine

Akira Toriyama convinces me that Majiin Buu is actually a Metaphor

well for starters, he is pink

in his head lies the ability to transform you
into something to be devoured

his strength is appropriated
from the people he absorbs

he was made from a group of magicians
an illusion made flesh
people don't think he exists

he kills everything in his path
even those that created him
they just won’t realize their death
until it is too late

in his greatest form he is a child
catch them young, before they learn
the vitality of destruction

you kill him and he comes back
Black

because in the end
that’s all he wanted to be
any way

to become what he has always feared.

register now for freedom

- Split This Rock

on learning america’s english

Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Laboratory, and the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
were some of the best English teachers a francophone immigrant

could ever have. Their curriculum riddled in laughter,
impossible exploits, and the daunting task of saving the world

from the aliens.

My accent is a Saturday morning cartoon. It often riddled others
with laughter. Coiling into a language not its own was an

impossible exploit. Trying to find strength to transform into
something powerful to save everyone else

from an alien

and the shame that came from being made to feel so different.
That my accent, my culture, my breath was too unreal

and did not deserve to be so animated

Spoiled ChilD

- Poets.org

Faith

- Callaloo