NYU Black Renaissance Noire NYU Black Renaissance Noire Vol 17.2: Fall 2017 | Page 18
poetry
By Ijeoma
Umebinyuo
Silence Anguish
1.
you have to form it in your mouth
you have to push it out
to give birth to it outside yourself
you have to pull words out of your
bones
blood,
fingers
tongue
and from between your teeth How can you tell me to go back and touch
what hurts me just to write about it.
How many ways can one die?
Every word, every sentence bleeds,
this is the only way to describe the feeling.
I call it anguish now.
Anguish is such a powerful word, it is full of sorrow,
you have to form it in your mouth and push it out.
This is how it feels on many days.
But I had to write, i needed to write.
I was frantically searching for ways
to pull words out of my bones,
out of my blood, out of my fingers,
to write it all out with anger,
knowing i had to save myself.
no one teaches you how
to pull gold from copper.
2.
i watch as the women sat
breaking stories to feed themselves
one had to be careful
or you step on a broken story
and bleed.
3.
being born this black, this woman
with the wages of silence
strangling our voices
tongues tied, stitched,
sins not washed, no absolution
we stare at the repercussions
but,
nobody warns you that the women
whose feet were cut from running
would give birth to daughter with wings
no one taught us how
to pull gold from copper.