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Naki Akrobettoe


A Poem That Healed  ☊
         —for my aunt Pandora, a.k.a. Precious P

100 percent of me believe that I possess the cure to cancer- call me crazy, that I very well may be. Truth is, I cried for seven days straight when they told me my Aunt Pan had three months to live…My tears reached towards the heavens and my heart ached just to give her more of what we consider time because I deemed her to the most valuable gift that life could bring and if I could wish upon a million stars I would wish just to sing her peace. The melody would start off with a little bit of humming followed by a sweet symphony of brass, bass, and cello. I promise you have never met an angel with a sweeter hello- she was my everything. She was to me, what Michael Jackson was to the world and we made a pact when I was just a young little girl, that I would never stop dreaming in color, or outside the four corners of a box, even if I was living life at the bottom my heart would always put me at the top. My aunt could never hurt a fly and the moment she bowed out gracefully, I never questioned why because I told myself big girls don’t cry- we shower blessings and after the cancer therein lied the lesson that all I ever asked God for was the strength to see her through her last days. Morphine was not enough to erase our past away. I can still smell her baked fish and broccoli casserole. I’m smiling toward the heavens because the angels will never know a dish tastier or a hug never worth trading; this woman taught me about dating, first kisses, and heartbreaks. I would be rude if I did not reciprocate, so with all the God within me, I vowed to write her a poem a day, just to create a fantasy where she could stay, just a little while longer so I could find her a remedy that could erase her pain away gently. If only peace came in an IV or a bottle I would go bankrupt just so she could swallow or break bread, even take communion. Never again would she have to be tube fed, because I was poetry at her bedside; a peace that will never subside. Not even after the last syllable was written, not even after her eyelids closed- simply because I wrote this just so she would know that she made a difference. I will recite this, live this, and breathe this in her remembrance.

Haiku #1 (Last Night in Accra)

Lights are out; City dark
writing by way of candle.
Flame burns ever bright

​
Picture
Picture

Naki Akrobettoe Profile

Titles are the hardest things to write,"--

Even more difficult than the poem itself,
So I pretend that the very first line of
Of my poem will begin with my fear, having

To conjure strong words to seduce my
Readers to continue the path of each line-
Break, deciphering syntax and language

Searching between words scattered across
The page only to discover within the end
Of this stanza that the title was already there.

(Inspired by Sarah Wells poem, “The Ladies’ quilting is today,”)
​

Fufu

Her legs are spread
like the wings of an eagle.
Back slightly arched; bent
over to catch her rhythm.

A spare pot of water sits
adjacent to the bowl of
boiled cassava as she reaches
for the two small pieces.

She places them in the center under
the mortar and with all her divine
strength, she begins rhythmic pounding,
with a long slender pestle with frayed edges.

The plant softly meshed transforms
into a potato-like substance
and with each pound 
her bare hand sprinkles water

over the surface
forming a mold,
until the perfected creation
of fufu is ready to be served.


               Protect Our Brown

The skin that I am in has a warrant out for my arrest
Colored coded fill me in with hopes of death-
a life sentence by stray intentional bullets,
my thick lips and firm breast on target.
My demise at the grip of the bluest eyes
my melanin sprinkled DNA melts away, tears that make
my sweet outer shell soggy and dilapidated.
One day I will be remembered by media as the Negro woman
lost at trembling fingers locked on triggers of their own insecurities-
a white not so clean slate.

I live in a lawful land of no laws- but in God we do not trust
in gun powder flesh turns to dust….Hush, silence for Renisha McBride.
Yes silence for Jonathan Ferrell.
More silence for Trayvon Martin.
We need more silence for Oscar Grant.
Please, silence for Darius Simmons.
No longer will I be silent about the ancestral moans that surface from the
belly of the Atlantic ocean’s floor.

Today, I left to go run an errand and returned home five minutes late
unable to greet my children off their bus, I prayed through the rush of fear,
hoping silently that they would stay in place on the patio porch.
I did not want them to panic at no sign of their mother.
History has proven that little brown boys and girls
are amongst the endangered that walk this planet.
When I pulled up to our home, tears betrayed my eyes
and rolled down tense cheeks, as my children came running fast and simply asked,
Mommy, why are you crying? I simply replied- mommy just wanted to protect your
brown…I just wanted to protect
our
Brown.

                                                      December 14, 2012

I prayed to the ripe moon
Full grey and white, to grant me
Solitude, a quiet room, and a birth
Absent of modern medicine.
2 am came crashing upon that warm
December 14, 2013 morning—sleep
Slipping through the grasp of my reach.
I tossed from each side like skiing on
Icy slopes. Within blinks I was covered
With cream blankets to heat the cold,
Interrogated about my recent stripes of
Love scars of previous births. You madam,
Were next in line to be written in history.
A trilogy turned Trinity with each wave of
Contraction, I surfed clinching to my
Retractable bed. Holy water sprinkled on
My forehead after each confessional of
Father God and Fuck you. Bullets of pain
Shot down towards the hell of heavy thighs
And when your crown peek-a-booed through
My temple, I whispered these praises, Thank you,
I survived. All I wanted was the menu: a cheeseburger
With pepper jack cheese, chicken broth, a turkey
Sandwich on wheat and ginger ale- Seagram or
Canada Dry. After I ate we rested, you were pinned
Like a proud button of my bravery to my bare chest
In honor of our travail through the sorrow of leaving a safe space--
My womb to now entering a world of unknown—Selah

Comments?

***

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