Gamba Adisa

Gamba Adisa

When you were born,

They did not know your path

Or what you would shout from podiums

Or write in hard books

On love

And war

And civil rights.

They just held you.

And we did not understand then

When you uttered your cry

Your fight for Life

And Colour

And Sex

We just listened

And you held us

In your inked hands

And taught us slowly

Around your Kitchen Table

By NLMcD

Footnote:

Late in life, Audre Lorde was given the African name Gamba Adisa, meaning "Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Clear". It is a name that applies to her whole life. Her struggle against oppression on many fronts was expressed with a force and clarity that made her a respected voice for women, African Americans, and the Gay and Lesbian community.

In 1968, she accepted a teaching position at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi where the violence that greeted the civil rights movement was close at hand every night. This period cemented the bond between her artistic talents and her dedication to the struggle against injustice.

Lorde went on to provide avenues of expression to future generations of writers by co-foundingthe Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

Ending

Ending

Liquid gold summer’s lees

Percolating through dappled trees; burning leaves.

By NLMcD

Cleave

Cleave

Sharp splitting sounds fight from the butcher’s door

as bloody hatchets cleave

through unyielding gore

And I of seven smell the red, thick in the air

and cleave to you strongly

to spare me there

But I’m naive you say, as you drive a wedge

Cleaving me away

With a honed tongues edge

Now receiving this mortuary I grieve

and cleave for another

Weaving through knees

looking for your sleeve

By NLMcD

Amber

Amber

I smelt my past on you

Whiskey breath,

beatings and flint eyes

That scent awoke forgotten times

when malt lies washed over me,

pulping written neverminds

And all my sheafs of faded script

bloated amber fat inside

and bore the record of those times

Soon my salty eyes

spoke those words to you,

no longer hidden crimes

And through that murky brine

You swam and blotted

All those lost denials

By NLMcD

Our Garden

Our Garden

Tended by gestures,

love grew for us from the fertile dark

drawn out of nothing

We readied ourselves to

extend soft palpable hands

to the rising summer

But warmth sorrowed to cold

and blunted our digits

blackening those feral fingers

Yet our lot flowered sickly

in the insipid light

wan from the thinning soil

And blooms that repeated in consideration

curled brown and turned paper mâché

then fell towards the hard ground

By NLMcD