Her Lulu cornrows knotted by the hands of her mother,
Introduce her ipseity.
Her sunless skin and cimmerian eyes,
Swallow you in like an ocean.
The cowrie beads hanging from her dreadlocks,
Call you in like the edges of a river.
The paintings decorating her face and sombre lips,
Hold more buried throes than ever was.
For in her ancestral mother tongue and gravity defying hair,
Lies the deep stygian history of odious serfhood and blood-won liberty.
It is in the design of the kanga she wears,
The lines on her clothing,
The patterns in her headwrap
And the threads in her coverings
Where …
Her aptitude becomes visible.
Her silence, discernible.
Her unspoken words, explicit,
And her beauty, acknowledged.
This Poem was published in the July 2022 edition of the WSA magazine. Please click here to download.
Read – The Gbagyi Woman – A Poem by Naziya Muhamma, Nigeria
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