Showing posts with label 🥳. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 🥳. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

To the Swimmer BY COUNTEE CULLEN

To the Swimmer

Now as I watch you, strong of arm and endurance, battling and struggling
With the waves that rush against you, ever with invincible strength returning
Into my heart, grown each day more tranquil and peaceful, comes a fierce longing
Of mind and soul...

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

We Drink at the Attenuation Well Porsha Olayiwola

We Drink at the Attenuation Well


Porsha Olayiwola
Motivated forgetting is a psychological defense mechanism whereby people cope with threatening and unwanted memories by suppressing them from consciousness.
            —Amy N. Dalton and Li Huang

              in Badagry there is a hung-
              ry well of water and memory

 

                                                         loss. in Badagry there was a well 
                                                         of people lost across a haven 

 

of water. in Badagry there was
a port overwhelmed in un-return. 

 

                                         to omit within the mind is to ebb
                                         heavenward. memory is a wealth 

 

                                                                 choking the brain in un-respons-
                                                                 ibility. violence in the mind and 

 

                                         the mind forgets in order to remember
                                         the self before the violence begot. 


in Badagry trauma washes ungod-
ly memory heavenward. in Bad-

 

                                       agry there is an attenuation well 
                                       meant to wish away a passage, 

 

                                                                      meant to unhaven a people.
                                                                      violence is underwhelming

 

                                       in return. what the body eats, 
                                       the mind waters. responsible 

 

is the memory for un-remittal. 
royal is the body for return. god is

 

                                                 the mind for wafting. forgetting 
                                                 is a port homeward. in Bad- 

 

                                                            agry hungry memory grows angry.
                                                            in Badagry the memories un- 

 

                 choke. trauma un-eats the royal. 
                 in Badagry there is a heaven 

 

                                                               of people responsible for the birth- 
                                                               right of remembering, for the well 

 

                                              of us across a haven of water
                                              overwhelmed in un-return.

Copyright © 2020 by Porsha Olayiwola. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 17, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

God is dead