that gold, velvet durag that shined
like ingots polished by her fingertips.
you took back her nightmares of the gold coast,
she looks and is reminded of Ghana.
the Motherland would be so proud.

you seized the Land of Gold and
it shined over that brown forehead
and below it, those
Black beautiful cornrows
swam in waved parts,
she could drown in your fashion

you yielded the Land of Gold
and the memories came flooding
like generational curses:
the Motherland and her trauma
falling to the hands of her children,
to their children, to their children,
we feel the ripples in bittersweet tides
and you wore them. and they tasted a little sweeter.
the Motherland was so proud.

she continued to drown, gracefully,
submerged head to toe in your fashion.
she fell in self-love with the way
you complemented her history,
what she felt was her worst parts,
she felt healed and complete.

she fell in love with that
gold, velvet durag complemented by
those Sahara-colored Jordans,
them gold chains kissing your collar bone,
bro your body is the continent, and
your fashion drew her glare.
you felt self-love too,
and hers

her gold fingertips were the coast
you gave back to her—her own Land of Gold,
her brown skin, her parted braids in
tandem with yours like curved rivers
that have no ends and flow
into one another like
ancestral ties
or the oils dripping to your ears—
like liquid gold, those Black beautiful braids
—those African curved rivers never dried out,
and never stopped shining

you fused with the motherland
and the ancestors you never knew
but felt in your blood.

you embodied the Motherland
and the love she felt for you.
the Motherland was so proud
and she loved you, her sweet, golden child

JAMAR JACKSON is a member of the class of 2028 and lives in Pierson College.

The post His Durag appeared first on Yale Daily News.

brought back school lunches untouched, let food rot
i can be so patriotic
Kerouac touches America and this country gleams
he does it so much better than me
football boy with white teeth and blue eyes and red lips
he will always do America better than me
better than the girl with a name that takes time to say
inefficient in a country where god lives in the coal fires and gas stations
and sometimes i wish i were not so afraid of the world
sometimes i wish road trip was not my parents hugging too tightly,
their hands, beggars, pressing prayers into my chest
sometimes i think they must be afraid every time the phone rings
i wish
and wish and
wish and
wonder
if a country could ever love its daughter back
so i tell jack kerouac i hate his book → kick him out for the fifth time, tell him to never come
back
i hate and it is so much easier
i hate and it feels as though i’ve lost nothing at all
i hate and
i have never been so american

FAVEN WONDWOSEN is a member of the class of 2027 and lives in Saybrook College. 

The post Birthright of a nation appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The post POEM: Pinus Strobus appeared first on Yale Daily News.

every stamp I’ve licked and locked on my skin. For every darling I’ve mailed myself to. Rubbing shoulders with birthday cards, tax notices, divorce papers, bank statements. Rumbling down Interstate 75, the mailman hums a lyric about love & somewhere, his wife mouths the chorus over her morning cup of coffee. And I’m sitting in the back of the truck, wondering if you will slice me open with a kitchen knife or tear me apart with your hands, if you’ll hold me up to the sun, read these words in my voice or mouth them on your tongue. It’s been months, dear, and I’m finally starting to understand. All we can do is ask. The space between to & from is the answer. How many times have I lettered myself with cursive this unclean? And of course, you were never the type to attempt deciphering. Still, I keep writing. I have only ever wanted a space on the fridge door. For someone to hoard me like those old photos they cannot recall posing for, hung only to prove they were visible. I was on the road for a long time. I traveled halfway across the world & I am more illegible than I ever was. So how kind, when you’ve arrived at a doorstep and it doesn’t let you in, for the mailman to tuck you back in his pocket, carry you past every stop sign you refused to surrender to. Return to sender. Or 

untuck yourself from 

this envelope & read out your

name from the front. 

The post POEM: A Letter appeared first on Yale Daily News.

around the ignored gaping wound

were gifted the bitterest of blames  

for your own suffering

and never pardoned for the sin

of wanting not to feel

as if with your neat acquiescence you

would forget how he had hit

but you had known the shape of fear

felt it mold to your liver and coat your tongue

had tasted it sweet like stomach acid

it ate your unremarkable girlhood whole

To cope they licensed your autonomy for

a chance at your complacency

your bondage their own comfort

your safety too abrasive to their frayed mirage

you stayed miserable in a docile body

were driven to those peeling yellow walls

to knowing the curve of your name

as pointed diagnoses of

you never trying hard enough

at embodying commitment to belief

and formal deference to science ever an

impenetrable motivator that

desires ultimate submission and

is ever eager to frame you its project 

to smother you with apathy and castrate your

small quivering body under the

guise of burning up your burial shroud

To make you malleable 

insure you profitable prisoner

they reached within you

with self improvement sermons peer reviewed 

and crushed your care in their latex fists

they spanked you with the knowledge that

your body was provocative 

were prideful at seducing you into

believing that harm’s the consequence of self

they all discussed you like a specimen

disgusting animalistic disobedient

yet vaguely beloved trainable

your bloated body held the captives yearning to

go anywhere but there

They squeezed dissent from your form and

left only damaged husk

convinced you that the dying skin

was goodness that your body craved

and handed you the blame inside a plastic cup

and lifted up your tongue

to make sure that you’d swallowed it

The post POEM: Punitive Psychiatry appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Art by Sophia Yi

At age eleven, Ezra calculated the age of the world

by summing the years before and since the Flood.

Its high-water mark fell above what he knew by sight:

blue night blotted out, the crest of East Rock whelmed,

that deer waterborne. He worked it all out on paper.

His mother had passed away in his afterbirth.

This news was given him slowly,

with none of the earlier scriptural surety.

It shone through him, like December light

through dun-white, chest-high grass.

His mother’s eyes were black, like his stepmother’s,

but inexhaustible. He knew this by asking his neighbors

and recording what they said.

In that doe’s eyes he must have seen his mother’s,

in the leaf she nibbled the dove’s sign of land.

The post POEM: After Kezia Stiles appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Flying the same route over and over

In a seaplane that crash-lands on the coast? 

The vehicle conceals the meaning. 

I’m mean without meaning to be. Mostly 

I miss a body flying over another body,

Buy massages and bottles of beer,

Rinse until the water runs clear. 

What’s that thing they say about water? 

A body is half-full of it, or more?  I’m so clean. 

Loose, liftable, light. 

Lucid enough

To know getting in a car is not love. 

What’s that thing they say about air?

The post POEM: Seaplane appeared first on Yale Daily News.

And here was the burn, its window smoke glaring

up at the house’s brow. Blown-out glass leaving

a dark tetris of mouths. I knew a boy

who sheared his own sheep for a long-shouldered coat—

he only took it off to dance. He would take girls

into the woods and allow them to wear it only

if naked. You could bend down in it and become

road kill. Ass up. We all lined up to become dead

and animal. Then—grease fire, one day in fall

an explosion down his family’s farm road, what

did he bring out, yes just the cream-colored coat

otherwise naked, sheepskin smothering him

through the blast. His pale nipples piqued like bird beaks

open through the heat. The way he jumped

over the rubble was like dancing. His name was a common one.

The post POEM: House with Burning Clapboards appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The dirt below your tomb

has bloomed 

with earthworms, and the sun

still keeps time

in lines and lines

of wind-smoothed stones,

elf-cap moss slow tip

toes over me

as I mourn you. 

My lifelong flame,

I sit here with last words.

I close my eyes,

and all my offerings burn,

blue breath curls

into wings, unfurls:

You are still angry with me.

I can still see the lining of your soul,

bright like mother-of-pearl,

crying, lighter than air. 

The post POEM: The Mooring appeared first on Yale Daily News.

I. Your Room is a River

& along the red riverbed I find myself

& you, resting. The day’s toils flock from us, little doves.

                                                                                 (weaving, leaving)

In this sacred palace I meet you each night; you call

it your darkened dorm room.

This flesh-on-flesh rhythm becomes routine, the flowers sprout

like wishes, one touch & they quiver.                                                                 

                                                                                      (white roses,

                                                                                                blood-red stains)

Amendment: it was once, but my mind reels

the scene in a routine. Falling, unfolding, opening, unspooling, softening.

In each quotidian moment you descend to me, haunting my body

with the memory. I don’t know whether it happened, or which parts.

All I know is the world moves on & I do not & in October I still

inhabit July but not its sun, its lint & limbs & latex & lying there, 

I imagine a scream so loud the river-room shakes

& plunges into a story I can never wholly tell. 

But then: the lake deltas like two legs 

yielding to you—I tremble but can’t speak, & so we dance. 

                                                                                 (twin cherubs, 

                                                            we’re spinning round

                                                                                 rising, falling) 

II. Baptism

Cover me in hands, gray sheets,

maybe just

                          darkness. 

Let me into your wrought-iron ribs; I want 

to live inside them.

                                   I asked 

                                   to be submerged but your water 

                                   was not safe. The blood & the burial & the wine 

                                                                                    & our rituals were not 

                                                                                                                   divine.

I read We Are Seven, Wordsworth 

                            & began to cry for that child. Wrap

              your limp fingers around my neck; squeeze

                            until you take one more thing from me:

                  life.

                                                But who can I blame when

                                                I lay there willingly, my yielding flesh       ready

                                                to be maimed.

III. Eden

Wordsworth, I love you for making natural things

your religion. But what if I told you my flowers

line the Styx: petals charred, stalks

strangled?

Your garden may hug you back until

you tear stems & they bleed, they bleed—

pale-throated Narcissus blooms that echo you

Wordsworth, you profess your love to

the lake in which

                    she drowned.

Do you remember the day in the garden?

         (Play-ground, prom night,

                                               pine needles)

You called me something; it became my name.

Your blood tasted like transition metals;

you were a small invention.

You ate the apple;

               I watched but said nothing.

The post POEM: Our Rituals Were Not appeared first on Yale Daily News.