Poems, by M. Saida Agostini

NUDE STUDY OF A BLACK WOMAN, CIRCA 1850

J. Paul Getty Museum, Artist Unknown

to you, I am worth less then
the camera you shot me with
the money you make selling
this daguerreotype to other
white men who hide me
from their wives in leather trunks
fraught with the smoke of cigars
who knew that a hundred years
later america would break its bank
for me, fiending
for an image that contracts upon
view. after this pose, where
I recline on your wife’s finest
silk chaise, and urge my fingers
into the very quick of me
I will hurry on my rough cotton
and go down to the kitchen
leave my hands unwashed
to bake your honeyed biscuits
rounded in the heart of my palm
and serve them before you
my good master, my iron
and labor weeping from your
pores. d’you smell me sir?
my pleasure? my ache?
tell me again who you
think I am

LILLIAN CARTER STARTS A LETTER TO A FORMER PHILANDERING LOVER

for great granny London, 1963

 SOVEREIGN

I am not in love, but I am open to persuasion

-       Joan Armatrading

I am 20
the first time I learn
how to persuade
my own body
my hands rocking
plaintively against my clitoris
past buds of curled hair sprung
in witness
to pleasure
those long afternoons
spooled
like a ribbon of ache: pliant,
bright incoherent

I am 34 the first time I divine
a flood between my thighs
screaming jesus
dazzled by my own making
how gorgeous how
lovely to rule                hold dominion
over a universe reap
its harvest ready
and blooming

I tell you, I worship
at the curve of my breast, feed on it
as you would bread
and meat

I tell you, I have fed myself a thousand times
and come back calling my name
in a state of joy - wild, spinning and ready

SPECULATIVE FICTION: APOCALYPSE

 let’s say the world doesn’t end
and you go to its edge
and yes, it is a real place: the ocean pounding
and pounding at the gates, white foam
winged and salty and lonely sluicing
and feral          will you
stay there, on your hands and knees
looking for god                                          count your infinite
offenses into an unending rosary                          try to be good
on a land you never really
could claim kin to tilling your
lonely into a field

or will you find another way
make your own heaven know
the seed that makes you roam
this world like tina turner in mad max:
black bad assed          and silver haired
enthroned in your own bare skin                beguiled in
your own story    its siren call

THE MERMAID SPEAKS*

ok, it’s true, everything they have said
I have eaten men as you would a tangerine:
thoughtlessly, reverently, juice smeared about
my mouth.

perhaps you would blame me, call me bloodthirsty
along with the rest of my kin –the canaima
the ole higue, even the mazaruni. roust up a gang of the young
brave on palm wine
to come and stake me

and I laugh as surely as you weep on my shores (this
ownership you’ll forgive me – I took it as the dutch
did your children). your forebears came on the same
hunt after I ate another man (your granddaddy?).
forgive me, he was lovely. ripe copper skin warmed
with the sun, singing among the white lotus as if he could
charm the roots of trees into fealty. I remember weeping
with my sisters below in our city, maybe he wept too
-its been so long, I can’t be sure, and there is nothing
I want to pretend with you. so I did what was impossible:
swam up, struggling past the pleas of my own mother,
burst through the Pomeroon and beseeched
him into my arms. (yes I say begged without shame,
you know the men of your blood, what they can drive you to do).
and forward he came, fearful of drowning dancing into my naked red arms
and when i ate him, he urged me on, sang with delight as my teeth met
the cradle of his flesh. I have heard his wife crying
at our shores, hands tethered to her children, dragging them to and fro
as if her love could raise him. the fishermen say she
went mad with grieving, is this true?

*in Guyana, mermaids, also known as water babies, have a long and complex history within historical narratives exploring the enslavement of African people. Sometimes seen as harbingers of good luck, mermaids were also warned to be cursed creatures who would kidnap your beloved and drive them mad.

Saida Agostini is a queer afro-guyanese poet and activist. Her work is featured in Origins, the Black Ladies Brunch Collective's anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, the Baltimore Sun, pluck!, The Little Patuxent Review, and other publications. She has received several honors for her work, including a 2017 Rubys Artist Grant and Cave Canem Fellowship. Saida is currently at work on her first collection of poems, just let the dead in.