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"There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past and the future." SINNERS (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler

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Jamaican wall of sound.

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Rihanna by Brent McKeever

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William Claxton, Donald Byrd, New York City, 1959

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“ a wl girlie”, Feb 2023 | PR$DNT HONEY

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“Lemonade” poetry bits

Intuition

I tried to make a home outta you. But doors lead to trapdoors. A stairway leads to nothing. Unknown women wander the hallways at night. Where do you go when you go quiet? You remind me of my father, a magician. Able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood you come home at 3AM and lie to me. What are you hiding? The past, and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a fucking curse.

Denial

I tried to change. Closed my mouth more. Tried to be soft, prettier. Less…awake.

Fasted for 60 days. Wore white. Abstained from mirrors. Abstained from sex. Slowly did not speak another word.

In that time my hair grew past my ankles. I slept on a mat on the floor. I swallowed a sword. I levitated… into the basement, I confessed my sins and was baptized in a river. Got on my knees and said, “Amen.” And said I mean. I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet. I threw myself into a volcano. I drank the blood and drank the wine. I sat alone and begged and bent at the waist for God. I crossed myself and thought… I saw the devil. I grew thickened skin on my feet. I bathed…in bleach and plugged my menses with pages from the Holy Book. But still inside me coiled deep was the need to know. Are you cheating? Are you cheating on me?

Anger

If this what you truly want. I can wear her skin…over mine. Her hair, over mine. Her hands as gloves. Her teeth as confetti. Her scalp, a cap. Her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can pose for a photograph. All three of us, immortalized. You and your perfect girl.

I don’t know when love became elusive. What I know is no one I know has it. My father’s arms around my mother’s neck. Fruit too ripe to eat.

I think of lovers as trees… …growing to and from one another. Searching for the same light. Why can’t you see me? Why can’t you see me? (Why can’t you) Why can’t you see me? Everyone else can.

Apathy

So what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children both living and dead. Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted, most bomb pussy, who because of me, sleep evaded. Her shroud is loneliness. Her God was listening. Her heaven would be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes…dust to side chicks.

Emptiness

She sleeps all day…dreams of you in both worlds.

Tills the blood in and out of uterus. Wakes up smelling of zinc. Grief, sedated by orgasm. Orgasm heightened by grief. God was in the room when the man said to the woman, “I love you so much. Wrap your legs around me and pull me in, pull me in, pull me in.” Sometimes when he’d have her nipple in his mouth, she’d whisper, “Oh my God.” That, too, is a form of worship. Her hips grind pestle and mortar, cinnamon and cloves, whenever he pulls out.

Loss. Dear moon, we blame you for floods…for the flush of blood…for men who are also wolves. We blame you for the night, for the dark, for the ghosts.

Every fear… Every nightmare…anyone has ever had.

Accountability

You find the black tube inside her beauty case. Where she keeps your father’s old prison letters. You desperately want to look like her. You look nothing like your mother. You look everything like your mother. Film star, beauty. How to wear your mother’s lipstick. You go to the bathroom to apply the lipstick. Somewhere no one can find you. You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face. Your mother is a woman. And women like her can not be contained.

Mother dearest, let me inherit the Earth. Teach me how to make him beg. Let me make up for the years he made you wait. Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Did he convince you he was a God? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his head? Am I talking about your husband or your father?

Reformation

He bathes me… …until I forget their names…and faces. I ask him to look me in the eye when I come…home. Why do you deny yourself heaven? Why do you consider yourself undeserving? Why are you afraid of love? You think it’s not possible for someone like you. But you are the love of my life…love of my life…the love of my life…the love of my life.

Forgiveness

Baptize me… …now that reconciliation is possible. If we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious. One thousand girls raise their arms.

Do you remember being born?

Are you thankful? Are the hips that cracked… …the deep velvet of your mother… …and her mother… …and her mother? There is a curse that will be broken.

Resurrection

You are terrifying… …and strange… …and beautiful.

Hope

The nail technician pushes my cuticles back… …turns my hand over, stretches the skin on my palm and says: “I see your daughters, and their daughters.” That night in a dream the first girl emerges from a slit in my stomach. The scar heals into a smile. The man I love pulls the stitches out with his fingernails. We leave black sutures curling on the side of the bath. I wake as the second girl crawls headfirst up my throat. A flower blossoming out of the hole in my face.

Redemption

Take one pint of water, add a half pound of sugar, the juice of eight lemons… …the zest of half lemon. Pour the water from one jug, then into the other, several times. Strain through a clean napkin.

Grandmother, the alchemist. You spun gold out of this hard life. Conjured beauty from the things left behind. Found healing where it did not live. Discovered the antidote in your own kitchen. Broke the curse with your own two hands. You passed these instructions down to your daughter. Who then passed it down to her daughter.

My grandma said, nothing real can be threatened. True love brought salvation back into me. With every tear came redemption. And my torturer became my remedy.

So we’re gonna heal, we’re gonna start again. You’ve brought the orchestra. Synchronized swimmers, you are the magician. Pull me back together again the way you cut me in half. Make the woman in doubt disappear. Pull the sorrow from between my legs like silk, knot after knot after knot. The audience applauds… …but we can’t hear them.

Warsan Shire

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Praise to our mothers by Gcina Mhlophe

If the moon were to shine tonight To light up my face and show off my proud form With beads around my neck and shells in my hair And soft easy flowing dress with the colours of Africa If I were to stand on top of a hill And raise my voice in praise Of the women of my country Who have worked throughout their lives Not for themselves, but for the very life of all Africans Who would I sing my praises to? I could quote all the names Yes, but where do I begin? Do I begin with the ones Who gave their lives So that we others may live a better life The Lilian Ngoyis, the Vicgtoria Mxenges The Ruth Firsts Or the ones who have lost their men To Robben Island and their children to exile But carried on fighting The MaMotsoaledis, the MaSisulus The Winnie Mandelas? Or maybe I would sing praises to The ones who have had the resilience And cunning of a desert cobra Priscilla Jana, Fatima Meer, Beauty Mkhize Or the ones who turned deserts into green vegetable gardens From which our people can eat Mamphela Ramphele, Ellen Khuzwayo Or would the names of the women Who marched, suffered solitary confinement and house arrests Helen Joseph, Amina Cachalia, Sonya Bunting, Dorothy Nyembe, Thoko Mngoma, Florence Matomela, Berta Mkhize, How many more names come to mind As I remember the Defiance Campaign The fights against Beer Halls that suck the strength of our men Building of alternative schools away from Bantu Education And the fight against pass laws. Maybe, maybe I would choose a name Just one special name that spells out light That of Mama Nokukhanya Luthuli Maybe if I were to call out her name From the top of the hill While the moon is shining bright; No—Ku—Kha—nya! NO—KU—KHA—NYA!!! Maybe my voice would be carried by the wind To reach all the other women Whose names are not often mentioned The ones who sell oranges and potatoes So their children can eat and learn The ones who scrub floors and polish executive desktops In towering office blocks While the city sleeps The ones who work in overcrowded hospitals Saving lives, cleaning bullet wounds and delivering new babies And the ones who have given up Their places of comfort and the protection of their skin colour Marian Sparg, Sheena Duncan, Barbara Hogan, Jenny Schreiner. And what of the women who are stranded in their homelands With a baby in the belly and a baby on the back While their men are sweating in the bowels of the earth? May the lives of all these women Be celebrated and made to shine When I cry out Mama Nokukhanya’s name KO—KU—KHA—NYA!!! And we who are young, salute our mothers Who have given us The heritage of their Queendom!!!

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“The piano ain't got no wrong notes.” - Thelonious Monk

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