By Kim Fowler
I.
I am brittle
as shale
Constant pounding
shards me into
cuts
of history
that singe
choke
slice
drown.
Tear-blind
I plummet
through
400 years of
appropriation
brutality
defiance
drubbing
until
my fall is broken by
the unyielding resistance
of beloved family stories.
I clutch each fragment
like a baby discovering its
finger strength.
I suckle
and am lulled by
memories that soothe,
then
cry out
in startled agony
in swallowing a scrap
a bit
that
scorches
and burns.
II.
The earth hears my need for easing,
cool water bubbles up to meet my hands.
Within its shallow running are reflected back to me
ancestors, unknown and known.
Yvonne the mother of my body and heart
Josephine my mother’s mother, a brilliant beauty, and her sister Margaret,
both dying too young
Mama Hadley, my great grandmother, born at the end of slavery
Claude the plantation owners’ son and my great grandfather
Mabel the enterprising who birthed my father
and my aunt Dorothy, who loved me like a daughter
George my father, who protected me with fearful love
Great grandfather Anthony, the wealthy and creative narcissist
Herman my Grand-Pere, the “Sarge” who warred with everyone but me
They surround me, hold me, knit me up, restore me.
They sing to me songs of Virginia and Illinois, of Missouri and Cameroon,
of Nigeria and Wales.
They crack Black jokes that Claude doesn’t get.
They sing pub tunes from the Lake District in England.
They dance jigs and the Ekombi and swing.
They tell me they are my strength
and that the land will always save us,
the land will always save me.
They lay me down in love by the spring
in which float and swirl mementos
I’m never to forget
and never to let them harm me.
In time my ancestors dissolve into themselves
so that I may awake.
III.
I am raw
my skin
separated from my body.
I have laid myself down on the sacrificial stone
and handed the knife
to the gentle white women
who
unconsciously
flay me.
They wrap my skin in a
gift bag.
Smiling
they hand it back to me
then leave.
The fire of the pain
cannot be wailed or moaned away
it can only
burn
and
burn
and
burn
until it
tires,
until it
hisses into
air.
My ancestors cradle me
and I sigh into their arms.
I open the bag
and a sudden brilliance plays upon my face.
Gently
softly
my relations
reach in, then
piece by beautiful piece
place my skin,
brown with tones of red
like the scored bark of a Sequoia,
like southwestern dirt,
upon my smoldering body.
They blow cool breath
to quiet the embers
and still my heart.
I slip slowly into sleep
dreaming of sweet home Chicago
the place of my birth.
IV.
I am a gardener.
Collards and cucumber
tomato and tomatillo
rosemary and kale
tiny and tender
grow
under my gaze.
Their lives are in my hands
and mine is restored through their
glorious
burst from
seed.
.
Kim Fowler lives in Santa Fe and is the author of All Will Be Well: A Memoir of Love and Dementia. This book tells how her family members rediscovered one other after her mother’s stroke.
