#sistersandsaints

[zakiyaskyles]

#NewRead for the journey. This shall be insightful. What are you reading? #SistersAndSaints #BiblicalWomanhood #BiblicalFeminity #WomenInTheBible #WomenInTheChuch #JesusLovesWomen #TheBlackChurch #BlackBaptist #Evangelicals #ChurchOfGod #Christanity #ChristLives #Femininity #Christian #Church #Baptist #COGIC https://www.instagram.com/p/CfhdefsJXB8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[d-exavier]

The families of Sisters and Saints & Good Blood in Jérémie

From this point in l’histoire: The deepest red marks the oldest ones from Red Essence, Fond Rouge (b1930s), in the southwest. The lighter red marks the younger generation born and living in the United States (b1950s), Brooklyn. The coldest blue marks the oldest ones from Under the River, Anba Larivyè (b1950s), in the southwest. The purple marks the ones born from the unions of Red Essence and Under the River (b1985), with the lighter purple marking a birth in Brooklyn (b1980). The green marks the ones from Le Cap, in the north (b1986). The grey marks the one born most recently, after the earth broke (b2016).

The Butcher and the Chicken Fight Promoter begat Louise, Francine, Carol, and Max.

Louise and Jean sired twin sons.

Francine and Jean spawned three daughters, each named Marie.

Carol and Ernest brought into the world Denise and Marie-Ange.

The Candlemaker and Serge the Chef produced Ernest.

Max sat in many a garden sowing, but never growing his seed.

The Stone Engraver and the Chicken Fight Promoter created Namiba.

Namiba and Ernest brought about Solange.

Solange and Frankie generated Laline.

The restaurant owners had Frankie.

The Dress Maker and the Farmer made Josephine.

The Midwife and Sam the Chef gave rise to Yves.

Josephine and Yves gave birth to Chelsea.

[d-exavier]

Blacksplash

While we were gone the tiles were torn away from where the roaches once crawled into safely dark havens: shitting and making more of themselves so close to the clean dishes.

What’s left of the backsplash looks a lot like the moon now: rocky and cratered, a landscape waiting to be named.

No one wants to. No one wants to own this. Perhaps you can finally avoid those rapacious hands when enough cockroaches lay claim to you first.

I press my palm to her stomach and say, “Wow, he’s a big one.” She says, “I know. The size of a grapefruit. There are three more.”

We’re not talking about her sons waiting to be born.

Poking at the quadruplet moons pressing up against her ovaries, I don’t tell her what I’m thinking: What a cruel miracle— to birth a bunch of satellites by C- section, to have half a solar system in you before ever pushing out a life.

[d-exavier]

Our Daughter’s Condition

Whenever I break the spaghetti and drop it into the boiling water I always forget to add salt. Aren’t you worried our daughter might grow to betray her name? What kind of poet are you? Ah, yes, one who never paints. The man I know now is like the difference between cutting into a frozen hot dog and one that’s been sitting, dripping from itself lukewarm in what is supposed to be a freezer. The fridge has been leaking since the last time your mother was here. One more thing in this house that stopped working when no one was looking. I wish you would tell me a good joke.

[d-exavier]

Angie and Travis on the Parkway

Floating down Eastern Parkway riding shotgun in Travis’ cerulean Subaru, Angie thinks aloud, “What are bones made of?”

“Calcium,” Travis spits out, his tong lumbering with confidence, “and other stuff, like minerals and shit.”

“Shit like the dust from when the universe first began?”

Angie hangs her fingers out of the window, letting them skip across the early May air. For no reason is why she likes doing things sometimes. For oxygen and elbows and toes and tongues. There are bodies and there are planets: constant negotiations of scale.

“Where should we stop? My throat’s getting scratchy.”

Travis’ question followed by concern for his larynx would’ve made Angie’s breathing pause with paranoia if this were three years ago, if she were still chasing around boys so uncomfortable in their bodies that they spent their nights dreaming of becoming planets.

These days, though, she could say, with the same lightness as her fingers still jumping over Brooklyn’s breeze: “Just keep driving.”

[d-exavier]

I’m Holding, Ivan Forde

(for Frankie)

http://www.ivanforde.com/

[d-exavier]

Solange on Sleep

It’s Holy Thursday next week, isn’t it? When I went to school at the nun’s house they would make us do the play of the Last Supper. All the girls would rush to sit in the chairs to be the Disciples, but I always ran straight to the floor, always so quick to get on my knees. And I would wait. I would wait on my knees for the girls to take off their shoes. Sister Marie would push the bucket of water to me and I would just stare at the towel floating in it and I would grab it and squeeze it like I was saving it from drowning. I didn’t like to be Jesus, but I loved to clean the girls’ feet! Dragging the towel between their toes, I could just go away there on my knees, I could just disappear. I could give myself up and no one would even know.

I never sent Frankie any letters while he was in Miami. People who write letters are people who don’t know how to talk. Their mouths can’t do anything. They can’t do anything.  The moment that machine started to eat him I was probably brushing my horse hair, long and slow. By the time he flew back I was bald.

Whenever he got angry he would say, “My arm was cut for work, but you cut your hair for nothing.” He still tells me this sometimes and I still laugh in his face. Every single time I say, “No, no, no, sweetie, your arm was cut for a fat kid in New Jersey and he ate the whole thing, straight down to your thumb.” There is no glory in suffering. I never told him why I cut my hair. He’s so stupid for not being able to think of the reason. I like how long it is now.

Angie, there is nothing to do. He won’t watch me sleep. He won’t show me what I look like when I sleep. The veins behind my eyes are so tired from straining to see my body when it sleeps. My sight tries to crawl out of my face to sit at the edge of the bed and it’s like he knows when this is about to happen so he rolls over and stops my sight in its tracks by placing his hand around my neck. By this time my sight is stuck in my throat and my eyes are looking at the edge of the bed waiting for what they do to get there. I keep waiting to see because he won’t do it! He won’t do it and every night I think I might die! Every night I really, really think I’m already dead and I just need a person, I just need this stupid man in my bed to let me know that I am not lying in a casket. And it has to be him. It has to be him because when I asked everyone else, when I asked them, “Am I asleep? What do I look like when I sleep? Am I alive?,” they just tried to jump in the casket with me.

So I help him. He’s my Frankie, I have to help him. I lift my right hand and put it around my neck and we both make like we are squeezing the life out of me and I have to let him do this. I have to let him think that my neck is in his hands because I know he still thinks I owe him an arm. I’m really just trying to get my sight loose from my throat hoping that it can make it to the foot of the bed. I just want to know what I look like when I sleep.

He wasn’t there. He was spared. He wasn’t there. And if he could finally stop grieving the descent that he was not here to make, he might be able to be grateful for the luck in his loss and realize that I still worship him because he is my prophet.

[d-exavier]

Angie and Frankie

[Marie-Ange sits in front of the house with Frankie. It’s late morning.]

FRANKIE: Bang, bang, bang. And then the machine stops. And then I look up at the ceiling. I can’t find the sky even though the light is on my face. And all the men are coming from all the places: from the corners, from the stairs. But the only one to reach in and grab my stomach to rip my body out was the old woman. Mimose. She was the only one who had the strength to tear me away from my own body.

MARIE-ANGE: Like magic.

FRANKIE: No, no. This was marvelous what she did. It was better than magic because it wasn’t a trick. You are Christopher’s old woman. He will hate you for tearing him away from his own body, his old body, his useless body; and he doesn’t want to do that. He knows he needs to do that, but he doesn’t want to hate you.

MARIE-ANGE: I just kept thinking, “Look at this man! Look at this man I love!” And he kept shielding my eyes and uncovering them to reveal a boy. That is magic. “Look at this magic trick,” he would say.  “Isn’t that a cool trick I just played?” And I just couldn’t say anything back. I swallowed my spit and my whole ego and I said, “Yeah, yeah. Good job, son.” I pat his head like he was my child. I pat his head with the same hand I gave my father five. I smiled back at him like I pushed him out of my own womb yesterday and so there was no way he could know anything about anything. FRANKIE: That’s the worst thing you could have done. Look out at the field. Look at the grass and the sky. At the tall end of the cow stands a bride holding her son. At the tall end of the cow stands a bride holding her priest. And so you have to think: “Who was trampled under the back hoof?” You have to think: “How sweet is the milk? How hot is the sun?” The houses stand in the shade. No one knows when to wake up because the rooster is confused, because the rooster was standing in the shade, so cool it had forgotten its dawn.

[Frankie walks inside and leaves Marie-Ange sitting in front of the house.]