Clay
When Jody was just a little boy,
Kids around the block use to believe he was made out of clay
I use to make him sit between my knobby knees for hours,
curling my ceramic metal knuckles into a python,
kneading his feasible nose like kneecaps on spinal cord.
Like America strapped on their gargantuan texan boots
and stomped amongst his bones like African borders
A boy,
As brown as soil and minerals-
Said it felt like America invaded the bridge of his nose,
slicing off the ropes of heritage,
doused in european waters,
and extracted the calcium out of every reservoir
I believe God dropped him here...
Like thrown together borders.
Blood markings on his wrists like operational boundary disputes.
I became the sculptor,
My project became my son.
By the time Jody was 4,
I began moistening my clay with tears,
As I’d knead
And pinched then tucked and tweaked and carved and cried
transformed his nose into the eiffel tower
Jodie’s nasal bone lean and european like the tower of pisa
Firm, like the feet of colonizers
Yet abused, like history
Transfiguration is a family delicacy
Inherited from our ancestors,
the age of four, is when my figure began
The remodeling process.
My mother would shave my nappy black wool,
and replace it with straw.
She said cutting off your roots,
could prevent the tree you’d hang on, from growing.
She taught my sisters and I-
“you better use your manners and bite your tongues.”
I’d bite my brown tongue until the soil had avalanched down my stomach
And up my throat sprouted cherry tree.
Then came doggy tongue men salivating from the streets boasting to my mama
about how I’m really growing into my body into my body.
They liked how my tongue tied like stem
how my figure popped like cherry spring harvest
See mama taught us how to mistake objectification for complement
Carved our curvy canvases until the scalpels caved in and I promised that when I had a child, I'd do the same.
Jody’s eyes, glossy like glass
his being still like statue
stood crying at the age of 13
mud drooling from his lips
glass shards from his tear ducts
And the ground feeling less like ground
but marble flooring
Like he was the artifact in an exhibit America must study
Like a muse in a museum with a re constructed historical value
He said he felt broken,
I told him your clay is too soft, to ever be broken.
Baby,You must never forget that everything I do is out of love.
My grandmother, who bleached my mother’s skin did it for love.
My mother, who sat my sisters and I in a single file line made dimples by driving her nails through each and every one of our cheeks did it for love
My sister, who dyes the iris’ of her baby's brown eyes bluer than the white sea does it for love
I, The woman who pressed her knuckles on the bones of her baby's nose did it for love.
We harm for love, before they kill for hate.
and we will remold again.
and again.
and again.
and again.
until our children are unrecognizable...
even to us.