Sleep-Wake Cycle
In sleep, I hold catastrophe at bay;
awake, the fat arm of an aunt
and an uncle’s mustard breath
press against my softest parts—
This wreck: persistent, recurring
brain on loop, glitch in the algorithm,
defiance of now, catalog of future,
error of past, dominion over everything
Fancy
By the time the auctioning of my hands and the commodification of this flesh
between my legs begins, we are far beyond origin stories; whatever cane and fire’s
good wake could cut to erase wanting, could conjure into a joyful noise for rabble-rousers,
has done nothing save plunge me into the depths of cracked lips and bloodshot eyes,
wrap me in pinafores and white lace. High price to pay for proximity to white—
his calloused palms, gum, bone against my skin, rum-drunk words spilling from his lips:
you my fancy ▇▇▇▇ now. Possession has always been their blind spot,
unable to fathom the origin story of their concupiscence. He, like his brothers
before him and after, noble apes inking their incestuous nympholepsy
generation after generation—peculiar entanglements forged between fields, sheets, ledgers.
Beneath his heft, between each breath, I hear my grandmama’s hum come ‘cross the river,
come ‘cross the river and say let there be no grace for those who call you out your name.
for Regina
circa 1802
.CHISARAOKWU. (she/her) is an Igbo transdisciplinary poet artist. She’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and others. A health futurist and retired pediatrician, she’s developing a poetry collection set in the liminal spaces of the African diaspora in the Americas.\
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