Selections from Omotara James: 2 Poems By Karisma Price

BY KARISMA PRICE
SELECTIONS BY OMOTARA JAMES

Even if you’ve never endured the burn of a chemical relaxer, even if you’ve never sat still beneath the crackle of a sizzling hot comb, who among us hasn’t processed the body through a problematic paradigm? Hasn’t prayed for at least one part of the whole to be perfect? An inquisitive voice emanates from Price’s poems with all the authority granted by compassion. How the he tenderness of the phrase “to hold the seeds of you in my fingers” cohabitates within the same poem that mouths “the feathered kiss of suffering,” demonstrates Price’s lyric grace and propensity to translate every divine inch of the mortal coil.

God of burning scalp,

prevent the dollop of chemical from destroying my cousin’s hairline. She sits contently in the kitchen chair, unaware of the approaching fire. I watch how the loose strand swings, lands on her acne cheek and wonder how long it took her to master stillness. How many times did my aunt have to promise her an incentive for straight hair and itchy scabs? I frown when the smell of sulfur floods the room. When the hot comb couldn’t tame the wild, my aunt suggested a more permanent solution. This is a rite of passage. Maybe now it won’t look so nappy. When the thick, white cream loiters for too long on my cousin’s scalp, she bolts from the chair and plunges head first into the kitchen sink. This must be what a proper baptism looks like.

Demeter, Reimagined as a Black Woman, Speaks to Persephone

Please do not come back to me
suspended in the sky’s quiet

diorama, or in umber pieces
that require me to hold the seeds

of you in my fingers
like an examiner holds

a tooth to an x-ray. Baby, I have broken
the trees for you. I will curse every

person that yells, “A man was lynched
here yesterday,” but refuses to acknowledge

his wife. Did they ever cut her down or
does she still swing above us like a broken

promise? What of the mothers afraid of being
mothers of daughters and fear the feathered

kiss of suffering? I asked God
for mercy. There was no answer.

I’ve decided you don’t have to answer
me either. Because I love you, surrender

to the only darkness heavier than sleep.
Do not come back from it.

---

Omotara James is a poet and essayist.  Her poetry chapbook, Daughter Tongue, was selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Her debut full length collection, Mama Wata, is forthcoming in the Fall of 2018 from Siren Songs, of CCM press. She has been award fellowships from Cave Canem and Lambda Literary. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. For further information, please visit her website: www.omotarajames.com

Karisma Price was born and raised in New Orleans, LA and holds a BA in creative writing from Columbia University. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Four Way Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Vinyl, and Leveler. Karisma lives in New York City, and along with Kwame Opoku-Duku III, she is a founding member of the Unbnd Collective. Find her on twitter at @itsKayPrice and here.

Selections from Omotara James: 2 Poems by C. Bain

BY C. BAIN
SELECTIONS BY OMOTARA JAMES

What is it that survives trauma? Or rather, outlasts it? Bain’s evocative poems offer elusive tenderness for those who traverse this liminal space. Through haunting portraits, the poet daringly reimagines the dailiness of these tortured mythological figures. Their relatable frailties leave us to ponder our own lusts. Though vastly different, the protagonists of both poems are generously afforded an agency unavailable in the original myths. What they do with it is another matter. Through the perspective of the speakers, Bain acknowledges transfiguration as restoration. These poems bridge the distance between hamartia and humanity. No sins left unsung, Bain leaves us to marvel at the creeping nature of human compassion as it ebbs…

(Persephone’s Husband Is Not Important And He Says)

She’s sitting on the bed
with her long legs folded under her.
Her eyes sliding away from me
as they like to do, like I’m a figure in smoke
like there’s a river of information
that only she sees. I want to ask her why
but I don’t. When the man took her
(the witnesses said chased, dragged)
trapped her under the earth
then she did what she did. It’s strange
when you think about it
that fruits are seeds and we
eat them, sugar fertile and harping
at the tongue. It bothers me
that that is what she took
not the utility of bread, but tart, crystalline
the skin red and transparent inside its covering
of outer, rougher skin. And now
she isn’t mine. I was never yours. It isn’t
ownership, she says, because since she’s come back
she reads my thoughts
and sleeps six inches above the bed,
moaning. I know this happened because
she does not believe I love her. Now I ask permission
to kiss her, air hissing past
my seedling teeth. I ask her why
she comes back and she puts her hell-hand,
her death hand, gilded immortal
against my cheek. I come back
because you need me. You would die
without the rain. Sucks at my tongue
until it bleeds sugar, a seed. Her nipple,
the crest of her ribs, the cells
of my body and the devices in the cells
and the space in between them. Whatever
life is. Electrical,
animate. Please.
Please give it back.
 

After the Curse Was Lifted, Midas

fell & wept, the grass
emerald blades bent
at his kissing mouth.
It lasted weeks
tender humility
his trembling hands tracing
rumpled bedsheets, ribs of living oxen
enough gratitude for any god.
He avoided his treasure-room
had the metal stripped off the cornices
cherished the wood’s raw bones.

But in some small span of human time
the truth; he wanted that power again
even if he’d starve, heartstiller, shitgleamer,
weeping alchemy out every pore.
He dreamt of it and woke and cursed.
And when his daughter disobeyed him
tell me he didn’t remember her small visage
frozen into metal. Tell me he didn’t wonder
if there had been some secret work around –
a gloved slave to feed him

and the question of women
if he could take them sudden enough to force
dilation before the metal took hold,
or if he’d have been forever
at a closed, golden gate.

He blamed the god
for giving him a wish that went too far.
Isn’t it god’s task to save you
from yourself? Wouldn’t a kind deity
have found some way to truly provide,
not this lawyer’s trick
food turned rock in the mouth

but no, here’s Midas
is thirst grown back.
His daughter alive.
His coffers howling.

---

C. Bain is a gender liminal writer, performer, and teaching artist, based in Brooklyn. He is a former member and coach of multiple national-level poetry slam teams. His work appears in anthologies and journals including PANK, theRumpus.net, A Face to Meet the Faces, and the Everyman’s Library book Villanelles. He has shared stages with Jim Carroll, Patricia Smith, Dorothy Allison, and Saul Williams. His plays have been produced in summer festivals at the Tank and at the Kraine in New York City. His full-length poetry collection, Debridement, was a finalist for the 2016 Publishing Triangle Awards. He is a book reviewer at Muzzle Magazine. He works extensively with movement, embodiment, trauma and sexuality.  But he'd rather just dance with you. Visit.

Omotara James is a poet and essayist.  Her poetry chapbook, Daughter Tongue, was selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Her debut full length collection, Mama Wata, is forthcoming in the Fall of 2018 from Siren Songs, of CCM press. She has been award fellowships from Cave Canem and Lambda Literary. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. For further information, please visit her website: www.omotarajames.com