From Scratch
Because I've seen a yam peel
become flour, I refuse to admit
to my uselessness. My grandma said
if we are not from birth a finished light,
we can be one made from scratch.
I like this kind of (re)making:
food waste spread outside on a mat
enduring the bites of the sun, the
tapering tip of chickens’ beaks,
then all the rage from a blending blade,
just to show the universe it is capable of
thriving. Here, the things we celebrate the most
come to us as a shock. Like yam flour.
Like the luminary my burnt-out body would emerge.
September, or Self-portrait with Hemophilia
for Q.
We are still the country’s
only butterfly and meadow.
I am beautiful because
you say so. I am so close to
believing in my beauty.
All the women I meet leave
when my knee blows itself
big like a balloon. I,
prolonged bleeding. I spent years
mistaking the hospital for home.
I don't understand, whenever
you call my body an eclipse.
You say light is not light if
it's not preluded by darkness.
That is what makes it sublime.
That is why I think God is
not a void. In a recent poem, sapphires
can also be found around the glasses
a woman puts on. You looked at me
in a time of harvest and wondered why
I was not a blooming orchard.
I have become one ever since.
The post The Yam Peel’s Reinvention Has Nothing on Mine appeared first on Electric Literature.
