Mud

Primordial

Oozes through fingertips

Smearing it over the contours

Of a brown face.

It dries in streaks lighter

Than my skin tone.

I am she

Seen in cultural mythology

As fighter

As Savage

As definitive woman

The one it is said men want in their bedrooms.

I am she

As I stare in the mirror

Of the river

Near the edge of one first city

Of the country

That oppresses my

People.

2.

Transfixed like Icarus,

The ebb and flow like my own heartbeat

I see water as home; as a life

I want to enter and traverse

To tell the tale of the bones down there.

The bones stirring up dust

And whirling dervishes known as tornadoes.

Creating a kind of devastated astonishment

That mere wind can pick up a car

And toss it through the air

Like a frisbee

Until it lands somewhere

Irrational to all but the bones.