Violence is a Dancer
Violence is an exotic dancer gyrating her hips with fierce ecstasy. Her ancestry is corruption. Her costumes—alluring, eye-catching, magnetic— secrete force. Force nudges motion. And when motion, eventually, turns many eyes toward her, her adrenaline loses its temper— bosom, hips, butts, head, hands, legs—turns reckless all at once, and her performance climbs higher as if her stage is now the Whirlwind.
International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation
(This poem bears witness to the girl child—her body, her voice, her survival.) Traditions are like antiques; both suffer an identity crisis, ugly in modern eyes, yet sacred to cultural eyes.
Grandma bends over me. Her shadow swallows my body. I search my mother’s face; she lowers it, like a weeping willow.
Grandma hands her tools work in my hidden place. My cries wake the night. They travel beyond that day, etching themselves into stone Unforgotten.
Emancipation of Silence
The stage is Ms R’s face. His breath is violent rising, falling, paranoid as sea waves.
Muscles swell with charge,
collapse without remorse.
Mr C’s performance is wild.
The stage caves in.
The sound of collapse draws attention.
Mr C is trapped
in the broken stage.
The impact crushes him.
The world watches his fall.
Mr C will never perform on that stage again.
Anger, an Albatross
Closing my eyes, waiting for time to pass,memories of my old, ugly slippers dance in my face. Like two lovers tangled in high ecstasy, I clung to it. Like a peacock sashaying in stilettos, I strode in it. Until it became my albatross.
One day, my old, ugly slippers broke. I took it to the cobbler for a fix. Eyes wide, he looked at my slippers, then into my eyes.
“Damaged beyond repair,” he said.
This time, my Ugly Anger had slain a man.
“Justice must prevail,” echoed in my ears.
the stench of my albatross floats around.
Fourteen years, fourteen years, fourteen years—
this cacophony caresses my ears as I continue to wait, wait, wait.Waiting for the years to pass.
Poet’s Note
Anger, an Albatross explores how an unchecked emotion hardens into consequence.