Daughter Odin
Dispatch from the Stungflower
Seed Cries for Man Named Jesus
after Cydni Thompson
AbrahamAfricanGreek gods alike
fuck on drug and war their fragile cosmic debris
A man’s baby dies he flies to DR for sex tourism
Jesus isn’t Louis Armstrong
sewer gnats are thriving, unionized
now chisel honeycombs in the hides of rotten teeth
to the drunken ear ‘I’m in’ sounds like AMEN
holycost hymen say the prymen
my first memory a woman’s eyes were gouged out
everything doesn’t exist for beauty or even truth
daughter Odin holds the ruby scalped from her paperflower mass
she wrenched the sunrise from her backbone
Giftcrow
a giftcrow lived in the mouth
of a bear/ born ah
the snarefaced that kinned they blood
off daughters chiseled of smoke
a cross slice
in the soft of they throat
bare witness
ear and piercing plugged of loc’d hair
a pair of cockroach
scuttleplow the length
ah marble house
the owner of which be-
draggled offspring-
sneer a prayer
they hid in their back pocket
Sons of Aamon
Soapbox , layer of tricks
Nearer are the rime days,
frosted smoke sob
of mad kings who dangle
share their nature –
wasted and pliable,
choiring the verse of starling
to heart hoarding women
who long ago scratched their eyes out
from vanity.
‘Tension ! :
those gagging on tab cobalt
-and those who straddle fence
in red plated shoes –
lest the mothers who never taught
NO
a boy, a man, someone son killing
every five hours !
Let’s sculpt the terrain
of our lives –
away from sons of Aamon
eaters of tables
plucking life from eyes-
ferry from that constellation
of block stars.
Gia Anansi-Shakur is a writer, editor, gallery curator and visual artist based in Harlem, New York. She is an editorial associate at Fiction magazine. Her poetry has appeared in Poem-A-Day (Academy of American Poets ) No, Dear magazine, Honey Literary, Brown Sugar Literary and the Broadkill Review. Her visual art has been featured at The Heath Gallery, the Brooklyn Courthouse, Arcanum Zine, Centro Civico Cultural Dominicano Inc., FiveMyles Gallery, Naori House, and Artful Walls at Home To Harlem. She is a recipient of the Poets Afloat Residency of 2023, an inaugural junior fellow of the Watering Hole writing retreat. She is the co-founder of Revival of the Seers, a program that seeks to financially and spiritually nurture culture workers in the Southern US.
