What is an African Poem

What is an African poem
drifting on the diaspora ñ
that disparate etcetera of belonging
that borderless rhyme land?

We divine poetry in our hands
like palmistry,
roll our tongue tips over words
and grammar, trace
the simile, the sibilance,
stumble stammer its punctuation,
palate smooth its conjugation,
its metaphoric function,
(will we find an African conjunction?)

Strip this poem
bend her over backwards to con-
form the flattened back of our mountain,
make her restate, rephrase the south.
Help her language to its feet
tell her: stand up!
stand up
if you speak my speak!

Poem from Africa? of Africa? with Africa? in her bloodline Africa? only mine Africa? an African poem?
Do you read her in the accent of her pen?
Or hold the sway of her cadence
in your cupped hand,
suckle her quest for home
for any rich loam to take root again?

Or do you ask about her poet?
Is she African too? Or he. Or black or white
or red yellow blue faced choking identity
in no-mans land poetry.

Stand up,
stand up
if you speak my speak!

A poem is foreign soil, an unmapped island
a xenophobic society of printed ink ñ
you hover on the margin, reading in.
until a word extends its hand,
a line opens its arms
and suddenly!
youíre through.


So stand up
(if you speak my speak) and keep
moving, verse to verse.
This poem is not a conference of words and phrases
to listen and notate in catatonic hazes;
between tea-time stanzas debate instead
the state of the sun rolling overhead.

No! Stand up
(if you speak my speak) and keep
moving, line to line
until the chant of her siren song
binds you to her skin
invites you in
and under
and deeper
into her heart beat

Then whisper this question beneath her sheet:
is an African poem born and bred
or is it African only once it is read?

stand up, stand up

if you speak my speak