Comma
Published a poem, “Comma”, in the February issue of the Journal of Medical Humanities.
Drawing from and engaging Black feminist notions of ‘rememory’ (Morrison) and ‘healthful narratives’ (Burch), this poem explores themes of intergenerational love, loss, grief, and embodiment as (re)encountered/revisited via memory. Grounded in reflection on a poem written as a child, this piece offers a sort of excavation and second-chance look/narration of the un-worded wounds and unformed questions loss leaves us with—even decades later. It took me 27 years to “write” it.
Comma
when my great grandmother
was in a comma, i wrote a poem
at her bedside
something about roses and Tang,
the clinking spoon, collard greens and
candy stores i stole 5-cent gum from –
apologies and grace;
a basement where my father
slept off the lows of high life,
of trucking;
something about the way
time passes, a pollen of sorts
working its way through rain
towards infinity
or the oil slick rainbow
beneath his white Coupe Deville
with curb feelers and
blue suede, a door too heavy
to open alone ||
when i saw her, i thought
of those curb feelers;
eyes closed, tubes in nose
i imagined them: sentimental, sentinels
scanning, feeling around, loosening,
pulling away her memories –
the work of a soft palm
on a chest growing tired
of rising ||
memories she forgot she remembered,
the ones that begin like fairytales and end
with a comma, an empty page, a heavy door
waiting for someone to open it ||
i wanted to open it || all 90lbs of me
crouched beneath a squat rack trying
to rise above the weight of a silence
i was too child, too unknowing to probe;
my tiny quads strong enough for
reverse layups, strong enough to hold
my body upright to touch her hand
and nothing more ||
i wrote a poem,
a grammatically incorrect poem
in green ink that wondered
something about the time
it takes to find the right questions –
an entrance to her memories before
the tubes got there, before i learned
how history lodges itself
in the body,
how time passes itself
between lips ||
before i learned how to correctly use
an ellipsis, i learned my index finger
can curve into a comma
around thumbs that once opened
band aids for me;
that a comma
and a coma
are not that different after all //