When a storyteller wails, who’s there to catch her drift?
A selection of partial poems and quotes: Connect the dots for me, won't you?
A mixed media study
The reading (with bonus audio):
The texts:
Perhaps I will open my eyes to the sound of trumpets, to wings carrying me up a beam of light. Perhaps tomorrow I will meet God. Perhaps tomorrow I will inherit the earth.
“Drinking from Graveyard Wells,” Drinking from Graveyard Wells, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (on Substack)
Someone, somewhere was shouting. Charlie heard trumpets… Sidney felt the music of trumpets… The sky had never been empty. History had never been silent. Everyone, everywhere, tilted their heads to the sky and heard our trumpets…
Sky Full of Elephants, Cebo Campbell
The Grootslang laughs, her laugh something between a vuvuzela, a hiss, and an elephant’s trumpet.
“When Death Comes to Find You", Drinking from Graveyard Wells, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu
Ah, my beautiful, ugly child. You are so violent. I could never understand you.
I cannot imagine worse than being borne to a world that you do not believe can carry you. But I bore you.
And maybe I will never see the beauty of this clanging gnashing future you claw towards.
But I understand that you are my child and your heartbeat is the only percussion I care for.
So fight, gnash, tear the world as you once did from my body.
Maybe there is a world (music) in these wounds.”
“Untitled,” Olivia Keller
we
the unsung
are the holders
of the most beautiful songs
bodily instruments
belting joy
vessels of vivacity
soul and struggle
daring to be seen”
we trust our wings, words: Bobby LeFebre, photo: Juan Fuentes
I feel like a spring loosed from the hold of a thumb.
Notes of Olivia Keller
…The tears on the faces of all the neighbors could only mean that a great baobab tree had been uprooted… then suddenly it was if the same spring had uncoiled inside both women… The co-wives fell to their knees, one on either side of the corpse, and started to cry, to wail, to beat their fists on the ground.
After 3.10 metres of voters, the co-wives had reached an enviable position under the shade of the giant rubber tree…
Co-wives, Co-Widows, Words: Adrienne Yabouza, Translation: Rachael McGill
Small rubber plant, Photo: Olivia Keller
I.
My mother will cry and claim a conversation her stabbing
The hair wrap I wore when I fled smells like carnauba and batana oil
I wore the white and held myself higher
My coffee is black and so am I
I don’t know what color my mother is today
When she cries, I hear a wolf
A pack of coyotes wheedle past the house
We pause to listen as she picks up a fist
To hold to her mouth, still I hear the wolf embezzle
The moon’s sign is Cancer
We talk about her cancer, lies
I am a liar because I did not record the conversation wherewhen her cancer was given a Capital offense name, a personhood that sounds like
“You and your sister gave me cancer”
You are my Cancer
Sirens, I hear sirens
They flash blue and white and red
Must be a reflection caught off knives
Knives, here lies knives
I can’t see them
Must be in my back
Ii.
The moon will be in Cancer on my birthday
The same as it was during my birth
I left the lair while transferring to Libra
I must look to the sky
That’s where I first appeared like an omen of ovaries stopped and swollen by seed
She screams out
“You are my seed”
I am my mother’s Liar
Iii.
When I set fire to the scorpion
It rose up to rest its fists to the glass
I left its stinger on the counter
Bound in sulfur and cellophane bubbles
I thanked my child friend
For honoring me with the lesson of
How to defend off a mother who won’t understand
IV.
I was born in June
I am violet and everglass and corduroy print jeans
And turtlenecks and purple glass and lipstick stained cheeks
I am ego and indefinite minus 2.5 times 7 and a half—…
“Blackberryland,” Olivia Keller
KATE: The effects of volcanoes can be really big, but they don’t last…
What If We Get It Right?, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Photo: Olivia Keller, Words: Randy Newman, Performance: Nina Simone
