Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie

Fugitive Starlight

We are built from their bones. Their sleepless nights. Their back and forth to too tight places where food and roof were exchanged for their light. How they salvaged radiance. Poured fugitive starlight into us. Taught us to balance a checkbook, stew chicken, bake macaroni and cheese, change a car tire, speak life into ourselves. Put your shoulders back,Keep your head up,that way you can see your future.

When they thought we were asleep we heard them praying in voices we hardly recognized. 
We wanted to see their other mouths. The machetes clearing the path of our days. Instead we stayed in place, pulled the covers up, surrendered to sleep, to dream. Those impossible gifts they were giving us.

Home

Nights at home are blue. 
The sound of cork 
coaxed from a bottle’s  
throat, jagged laughter.

Pushed down words clawing,
a razored alphabet 
slithering out. My bedroom 
door hisses.

Queens native Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of the award winning children’s book Layla’s Happiness (Enchanted Lion Books),the poetry collections Strut (Agape Editions) and Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye), and Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press). Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Listen up!, BOMB, Black Renaissance Noire,The Golden Shovel, and The Breakbeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Theatre Arts and Performance Studies program at Brown University. Ekere is the mother of three galaxies who look like daughters. www.ekeretallie.com