Yovo Pieds (White Feet)
I walk the sorghum streets, feet in ash,
bow my hands in prayer.
I look for you in the beads at the vegetable market,
in the white seeds that sprouted in my garden when your necklace broke.
You stuck your fingers in the ground where the sprouts had fallen
and almost cried.
Sometimes you moved, and it’d be like art to me.
I sift the white beads through my cassava fingers,
in a burlap bag to take you home.
I look for you in the voice of the woman in the wrap skirt,
in the bananas and ginger at the vegetable market.
The sorghum woman braids me a rug
chants each Yoruba thread
I want to say your name, but for the cotton in my mouth.
For seven dollars I buy an outfit
and the man in the market clutches the francs in both hands like bread.
Two dollars, two dollars I could open a bank account.
Two hundred years ago, I could have owned you.
I want to say I am sorry, but I do not know the words
and bile, coats the cotton in my mouth.
Il n’y a pas assez de chagrin dans mon couer pour te construire un navire de retour.
(There is not enough sorrow in my heart to build you a ship home.)
I look for you in the millet rasp of the moto people
who pull over on the side of the road just to look at me
The ash in the street rises up my pants leg, bites at my eyes
There is nothing free here; nothing given but money and cadeau
Body comes up to me, wants to be mon ami intime,
body says, that I will take him to my blanche home
But home drips of tobacco and bluegrass; I do not know that place right now.
I drag my feet through sorghum ash.
I look for you as they mash my mother in the market
in wood vats of starch dough the color of her face
They kneed her between dark ladle fingers I imagine
scratching down the crest of my wrists
They dress my mother’s body in palm oil
I look for you in the fish eye stew
as pieces of her stick to the flesh of their lips, they laugh. Full.
I eat her. I get sick.
I carry the mash of my mother in bowls to wash in the Niger
I want to find you as the pulp and palm oil rinse into the water
I want to say I miss you…
My feet trace eddies into the damped ash
There is not enough shame in my heart to rebuild a country,
as soft foam rushes the mash across the river, I search for you.
Cassava curds make small ships to the Atlantic off the port of Conotou.
Shayla Lawson 2004
Copyright © 2006 Shayla Lawson.
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