1 poem
WATERY PANTOUM FOR THE SWAMPY FIRMAMENT
after Allison Janae Hamilton’s “Wacissa” (2019) at the Dirty South:
Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse
We, kept alive, hanging
from an eelgrass sky
the wake gurgling and
i can’t stop flying home
love quiet this day, the
piling theater of birds nearby
all but praying to limestone:
to be hung is to roam
as the wake gurgles
and i can’t stop flying home
across a braided river
pink from milkweed, from
bloom,
all but preying over limestone
from hung toward roam
thick dreadlock masses
thread this pickerel weed loom
into a cross, a braided river &
pink milkwood heavy with bloom,
murky water, flickering between
green, blue, alive or not--
thick dreadlock masses
thread into pickerel weed, loom,
we let our sides erode
dress the past in old light, plot
murk, a flickering between
green, blue, alive. or not.
meandering the jam as if
dizzy in song, undulated melody
we let our sides erode, undress
the past in old light, plot
return. channel this river into
a nest, sing to stones an elegy
meandering the jam as if dizzy
in song, undulated melody
of love, quiet today.
theater pile of birds nearby,
o, return. unchannel this river into
nest, sing stones an elegy
We unkempt, alive,
hanging from an eelgrass sky.
Makshya Tolbert is a poet, cook, and potter living in the ruptures between Black ancestral memory and ecological possibility. Her recent poems and essays are featured or forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Emergence Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, RHINO, Art Papers, and Odd Apples. Makshya is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program. In her free time, she is elsewhere—where Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. calls 'that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe.'