RICE
Grains of rice
Fall to the floor
Like summer’s rain,
Tsitsi’s eyes
Are about to
Pour the
Blood she will taste
On her tongue
As she recoils
From each whip’s crack,
She will beg,
She will scream
She will say it was a mistake
That she didn’t mean
To drop the food again.
She will learn.
She will grow.
She will walk
To the store
And buy herself
Cooked rice.
————————–
COERCED
Nala didn’t come home
Last night.
Her toes are curling
To Junior’s thrust.
He exhales
The intoxication of lust
With a final push,
Junior emerges from the bush
And lays the finger
That dug her dignity out
On her lips,
“Don’t tell anyone,”
As he plasters a kiss
And a wrinkled note,
As wrinkled as their bed
Of leaves, she hopes
Mama won’t notice her absence.
That a bubbigrum
Can chew out the stench
Of his breath on her neck;
Change of coins nested
Between her bra
And small breast.
————————–
SEWING
My skin is a
Patchwork of ancestry,
And I can only imagine
My forefathers
Weaving each
Ebony-dipped fiber
Together,
Debating with God
On which shade is better,
They thread the needle
With such accuracy,
Melanin so finely stitched
You can’t see
The soul beneath.
————————–
Poems © Tatenda Murigo
Image: Pixabay.com cropped