Sunday, April 15, 2012

Creative Writing Flux

I wrote this sometime in early March for my Creative Writing class, but I put off posting it because I couldn't figure out how to finish it. Still not sure what to do with it, but its Rwanda- AND Writing-related so I figured I'd  put it up :) Enjoy!
(Also, I've been particularly inspired lately, so I'll include a couple poems afterwards that are also Rwanda-/Writing-related.)

"The Banana Tree"

          The slicing of my brother’s skin elicits peals of laughter from a band of missionaries, and even though I know he’ll grow again, I cringe as his living water spurts, threatening to stain the clothes of his assailants. A corncob’s throw away, the one in the sun hat molests my sister’s fruit like it’s hers for the taking, but for a lack of ripeness, the missionary abandons her game. I try to use the sub-Saharan breeze as a propeller for my leafy wings to reach out to my siblings, but nature confines me; I am rooted to the spot, as I have been for the past ten years. The tiers of my sister’s heart remain visibly unharmed, but I see she mourns the disfigurement of our brother. As for me, the most revenge I can hope for is the browning of the missionaries’ coverings, and I wonder if they can see the juices of my frustration slicking my skin like the sweat screaming from the unconditioned American foreheads bobbing through the forest of our youth. Do they know? Do they know that they are being watched? No one knows—but maybe, some have faith.


"At a Choir Concert"

notes dance above the heads
of unseen singers as their songs
echo upward with a shimmer,
like the exchange of a silver baton
in a 1600-meter relay: sharp,
crucial, ephemeral—if not,
disaster

but, perhaps, wearing maroon
robes burned with age and
experience wards off consequences...

in the sea of pew people,
only I'm thinking
of cassava leaves
and African sun.


"Shaken Days"

sweeping slowly, a brown hand
around the wooden handle
of a broom; on the same street,
a chocolate hand in mine
swinging slowly to the rhythm
of our sandals in the sand
with a thousand miles behind us
and a million more to go

when she speaks, I let the r's and w's
roll over me as they bounce off her
protruding belly—one year from now
she'll be teaching those letters
to a mouth more wanting of sustenance

in twenty years, I wonder
if she'll remember the story
I've already misplaced in the mass
of memorialized strangers—
her story of those shaken days.


(P.S. Check out my recent publications, "Expectations" and "Identity"!  http://www.literaryjuice.com/#/poet-tree-april-2012/4562721175 )