HA&L magazine issue ten.2

Poetry • by Sarah Kabamba 1

 

Poetry


by Sarah Kabamba


Palate

the snake in the cave of my throat

lives off the skeleton of swallowed words

swollen with syllables slowly twists

itself around my bruised tongues

bites down, angry wound that is my mouth

fills with poison, i press my tongue

into the roof of my mouth, and taste

salt.

She’s not scared of people leaving

what terrifies her is what they leave behind

the stench of their absences, the holes

she has to keep filling to hide these phantom bodies.

She cuts onions without crying, her mother

always told her the trick was to press your tongue

into the roof of your mouth. She presses down

on the knife, cuts into her palms.

Sometimes when he kisses her, she bites down

on his lip so she can taste the sea.

He winces. She massages spices into red meat

the same way she touches him - wet hands,

salt clinging to skin.  

sour.

The day after their wedding night, she washes

the sheets with vinegar and water.

He whistles as he goes out to the fields. She braids

yellow beads into her dark hair, rubs lemon juice

into her skin. The goat’s milk always comes out sour.

He drinks it anyways, wipes his mouth against

the back of his hand, his knuckles are always bruised.

He brings her bleeding sunsets. She sits at the kitchen table

and picks thorns out of her palms.

bitter(sweet).

because they are one and the same.

he comes home from the fields,

grass and mud clinging to his skin.

she picks straw out of his hair and makes dolls,

washes the earth out of his clothes. It clings

to her skin, crawls underneath her fingernails, smudges

on his skin when she touches him. She traces dirt trails

on the bones of his back. When he yawns

the cloying smell of roses fills the room.

The walls smell different when he’s home.

She opens up all the windows in the house

when he’s gone, scrubs at the bedsheets

until her arms are sore.

umami.

Because sometimes nothing  

in english can say it. She ties her tongues

in knots, lips Swahili into the cracks

of voices, words, spaces, skin.

He begins to forget, tells her she must

learn english, speaks over her at grocery stores,

restaurants, parties, the kitchen table.

She sings lullabies in lost languages, her voice

bounces off the walls long after he is gone, fills

the spaces he’s left behind. She pulls herself out

of his absences, teaches her daughter

how to cut onions without crying.


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[Distillate © HA&L + Sarah Kabamba {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]

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