Happy birthday, Big Other contributor Jeffery Renard Allen! Celebrate by reading Allen’s “Four Poems,” which we published earlier this year! Then go read “Reading the Blind and Blacking the Beyond: African American Fiction and Influence Theory in the Twenty-First Century,” which we published in 2023! Follow that up with Allen’s “‘All War Is Deception as Is All History’: Structure and Time in The Daydreaming Boy” (which we published in our Micheline Aharonian Marcom Folio); “African Time Machine,” Michael A. Antonucci’s interview with Allen (which we published in 2024); and Allen’s interview with John Keene (which we published in 2022)!
Mar Azul
—for Cesária Évora
Blue-tinted parishioners
wander in and out of a church
gold-stained with morning sun.
Sweat gilding their bodies,
they chuckle each to the other.
(A beautiful face recalls another from long ago.
How is it that lovemaking can return so vividly?)
Clouds move slowly across the sun,
beyond it,
but don’t move on.
Keep it so.
The parishioners swing tipsy
with sermon and prayer,
a cacophony, deafening,
so much wisdom sounding together,
the sound rising to the sun,
extinguishing it along with daytime distractions.
The parishioners scatter
from each other.
(Life keeps rolling them,
like driftwood in angry Atlantic surf.)
In the darkness, dozens of cows scattered
across the island, their white shapes
forming a confabulation of stars.
Wind rises up,
trees crack, like rifle shots.
In the darkness, a guitarist
brings another sound—
back to the start, to despair—
his hard knowledgeable hand
patterning a sea-broken sequence,
waves never the same,
an indwelling of language,
corresponding body enlaced,
skin to skin, the guitarist determined
to put as much of himself
into them as he can.
The trees cease their complaining.
The night bursts into bloom,
awash with bright-colored flowers.
The sound of the guitar reaches
you, Cesária, and you,
born of seafoam,
return quietly, with no great fuss.
Like all of us, you had to go
away on that long trip to nowhere,
not that you’ve lost anything.
Quickly, you’re yourself again,
singing a morna telling
of sad longing,
another promising joy.
Now something new—
play what the moment recommends—
a song still in progress
though you, dear lady, have been
dead more than a decade.
Words marry each other.
No idea where they might take us.
The water is speaking to you.
(Water brought us here.
Water can carry us back.)
Your songs roam all routes,
hungering to discover what we
mean when we talk about love:
longing, the struggle to hold
the light, fulfillment, confusion,
betrayal, and desperation.
Who but you can sing us through this life?
Persist as long as you are around in the hearing and the nowing.
Word the world so that each generation sings the trials and truths anew.
—31 Décembre 2024-1 Janvier 2024, Charlottesville, Virginia
Dakar Blues
—for Ousmane Sembène
has chased away the shadows
from under the wall and the trees,
which sway madly and cast blush and languor
a skinny rectangle of limited shade not enough to cover you
the sun burns
you walk quickly as though to keep your concentration
long thoughts taking unfamiliar paths
no straight distance you can take
your sorrow so great you cannot keep it still
light zips through the narrow streets
heat comes off the ground in a spiral
wind blows warm air and dust in your face
drawing images across the still sheet of your eye
a beggar crawling through the gravel on his hands
where the road is wet and harsh after the rain
hard-earned coins in his pockets
he fights no more
carries the war along with his knees
swear the color of his skin resembles the reddened sky of a dawning day
intensity in their gaze
scaly-skinned cattle feast
upon black stubs of burnt grass
a skinny horse pulls a squeaky old cart
in the age-old way nomads move to find water
at the public well
lovers wash their bodies
where elegant calabashes
adorn the covered heads
of women young and old alike
the sun binding them
in great wreaths of beauty
ordinary life under the scrutiny of a policeman
outfitted in khaki authority
his brown face filled with alien ideas
that keep in check those whose sweat earns them shame
(poor man in the street, behave yourself)
the rules are clear
yours to follow or not
when the declaimer of praises sings
songs that measure our history
people cease talking and marvel
a vulture runs, carrying an arm of a man in its teeth:
make no mistake, we are all deep in the stomach of the beast
what a noise our lives make,
laughter, cries, a shout, a whistle,
the broken enchantment of a football game—
what rises out of these sources?
nothing at all
erase them with one blink
you bend to pull a wet leaf from your shoe
no, not a leaf, a feather
walk with decision
smelling the stinging salty ocean
although the sea has disappeared in a haze of heat
your heart will not slow
you hurry inside
take a seat in the first row
(the closer the better)
stricken with silence
the dark interior world of brick, concrete, and wood
with one precise rectangle
a blank white frame
at the center
many empty seats around you
space
(not the objects that fill the space)
a new language you must unravel
glare from the street reflects on the screen
when the door opens and closes
taking you aback
time alone
taking stock
seconds of light
seconds of shadow
images insist on their autonomy
the calm solidity of each
you have been patient in all fullness of that word
now understand that certain ideas are too old
to carry around forever
white table
white chairs
white floors
white corners
white walls
lighting your pipe,
you cup your hand
around the bowl
a little globe held
in your fleshy palm
the world flares up
a flash of awareness
brighter than your life
sweat sets your shirt moving
like loosened skin
can an act of viewing alter the visible?
believe it so
the history of what you once believed versus the
the history of what you come to believe
the invisible in the visible and the visible within
a beret
a sailor’s cap
a sheep’s hair bonnet with button on top
unyielding to every evil and injustice
were your efforts in vain?
we are inside the same battle
need answers
our future is worth the trouble
outside
white birds flow
above
why be a sunflower when you can be the sun?
Damages
—for Tems
Last night the dead walked through my sleep
My mother my grandmothers my great aunts others I didn’t know
hundreds heavy with grief
Years: evidence of what is lost
How can we pretend all is well?
Trouble spills into this space
Step away
Flee
Shine a little
Not the first garden lost
We measure as we must
scales close and beloved
Trapped in a pause
we always go back
leaving sound to a rocking chair
put through paces under creaking stars
The chosen wait in their pews
faces lifted in song or sermon
their knuckles still rattling with life
Not all the words are clear and bright
I want to hold on to the parts that are not fading
The last sharp laugh
Set to open sky
where bone and muscle move
at the go and come in nights
not made for scars
Cutthroats know the time and the hour
the battle of numbers that burns the air white
A dying people in a dying land of anything goes
awaiting a second coming in second-hand clothes
At the dark edge of belonging
you serenade us
Temilade
crooning rough and ready
defiance in every word
Togetherness is the weak’s weapon
So we stomp our feet against
the oil-bearing earth
feeling in the wounds under your back
—1 Décembre 2024
Africa No Borders
—in memory of Binyavanga Wainaina
The wind begins to roar,
drops of rain announcing themselves
on the tin roof above me.
Cocooned inside for days,
drifting in that space between
concentration and inattention,
the voice inside that seeks
to document,
to translate the moment
into words, quelled.
When I do begin
to write, some force
other than myself
moves my hand and mind
down unexpected paths
until, empty and forlorn,
I think about you.
We met some twenty years ago,
when we were both teaching for a program
in a city that was too much to bear.
A city that had been built on corpses
during the time of Peter the Great.
A city that the Nazis blockaded,
starving its people. City, a ghost.
Bones rather than buildings, each window
assuming the rectangular shape of a grave.
Like your name,
you were massive,
your body expanding out into the world
Your dreadlocks long thin strands
of black rain surrounding your face.
Defiance, constriction (ropes) in your case,
unlike the close-cropped green hair
you wore at my wedding on Zanzibar
ten years later,
or the rainbow tomahawk,
your freak flag flying.
Your dark reflective skin.
Carefulness in the air around
the body sitting there in the chair
across from me.
Caine Prize winner.
Wordsmith on the rise.
The following year, you would, for a time,
become the most debated African writer
in the world for your monumental satirical essay,
“How to Write About Africa,”
a declaration of freedom for you,
a minstrel echo, performance, for me,
since we are forever
doomed to define
ourselves in contradistinction
to who they would have us be.
It was June, time of the white nights,
and we took advantage of every bright hour
to eat (Georgian and Armenian cuisine),
drink (Standard vodka), and talk.
You fell away from the world
into conversation. Held court, outlining
your goals as a novelist, pontificating,
slinging outlandish ideas and advice,
a second thought cradling the first thought,
followed by a third and a fourth, and so on,
like a Russian nesting doll, bowl inside bowl.
For you, the far reaches of contemplation represent the true beginning.
Talking, you were air, oxygen, atmosphere.
That way you held both hands before you
bent at the wrists, punctuating your words
with gazelle-like leaps of your fingers.
(Begrudge me the jungle imagery.)
So much cradled in your skull
The world forever under observation,
subject, potency in the act of looking.
Continuous voracity.
In her diaries, Anaïs Nin writes:
“What is weakness in the man becomes a quality in the writer. For he preserves, collects what will explode later in his work…All his roles are played behind a curtain.”
The problem:
what lifts you up can bring you down.
Larger than life,
(High Heaven rejects the lore of less is more)
the indulgences (nyama choma),
the excesses (pints of beer, cigarettes, whiskey)
the globetrotting on endless assignments and junkets—
added to the depletion of your compromised body (H.I.V.).
Could not say no, refuse, decline
your body or the accolades, public appearances, literary citizenship, activism
(They pose you in front of paintbrushes,
take you outdoors,
put you in front of a staircase
after a group of children slip
into the background.
Notice a bench and make you sit on it.)
What turns your life took.
Then the stokes.
The next time I saw you in Joburg,
a long day of drinking and smoking—you never gave up
either—as if you were toasting Death,
smoking a peace pipe with Death.
In a car, you in the front seat.
me in the back,
you stared at me
in the rearview mirror
and through impaired speech
told me that you wanted to relocate here,
to South Africa.
Borders stood in the way of your longing.
Then another stroke,
and Death took you
and shook you to see
if you had anything left inside.
Our last time together,
we shared a table at a
restaurant in Maboneng,
the large gaudy necklace
you’d purchased earlier that day
at a shop in Soweto
displayed boldly across your chest
Sat mostly in silence,
few words between us.
By that point, took you tremendous effort to grind out a single word.
The joint was crowded and jumping,
loud and lit,
chandeliers suspended above us,
light fading, holding on.
Something of us now outside,
and something of the outside now within us.
Thinking back,
hard to bear up under this grief.
I write against the consuming black holes
of memory and forgetting,
aware of the vacuum opening
with each passing year between you
and the stars.
—18 Janvier 2024, Johannesburg, South Africa
