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- Herausgeber: Arachne Press
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
A Debut collection from Black British poet A J Akoto. When is a mother a myth, and when is she a monster? In an intimate and unflinching collection, A J Akoto tracks the complex bind of mother-daughter relationships. Through separation and attempts to mend, longing, and the fluidity of myth/story-telling in defining histories and identities, she collapses the elision between womanhood and motherhood/daughterhood, bringing to the forefront that which usually remains unspoken.
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Seitenzahl: 24
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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for Diana,
who told me,
‘you will find a way’
UNMOTHERED
Contents
Creatrix
Unborn Ghost
Gorgon
Delicacy
Return of Summer
Haunting
Unmothered XVI
Ox-hunger
Cunning
Who is to be saved?
Daughterhood
Mutation (water)
Your Death
I will come and set my stone before you (1)
Escaping Arrangements
Womanhood
Under Pressure
Candour
Longing
Forewarning
An Unsuspicious Death
Unmothered III
Mapping is a drawing problem
Unmothered IV
Falling Point
A Visitation
The Word
Unmothered XV
Nekia
Myth
I will come and set my stone before you (2)
Classic
Abystitus’ Ghost
Unmothered II
Seedings
Family Business
Protector
A Test of Water
Before her hand picks up the knife
Justifications
Exception
I will come and set my stone before you (3)
Unmothered XVIII
Stitch
Archaeologist
Estrangement
Violence
Why don’t you want children?
Unmothered XIX
Day Dawns Dark
Unmothered I
Creatrix
Mothers, first creators,
try to shape us in their own image,
or what they wish they were.
Feel the dip
of finger marks, moulding
muscle and bone like clay.
Our bodies belong not to us
but to the women who
grew us
fed us
know us
enough to end us with a word.
What terror and awe.
And after all, aren’t men
afraid of God?
Unborn Ghost
She’d tried for years
to get pregnant again:
this time a daughter.
When, after fifteen years,
she thought it had happened, she fell
on the nearby hill and bled.
Period, miscarriage, whatever it was,
the thought of a child was there.
Someone else was almost here.
I try to take some meaning
from this accident of death,
this overlaying of life on life.
But I know that I’m an accident of fusion
and division, that I’ve stepped into dead shoes
and that’s why life seems to shift away
from my eye line. Every time I snap around
to catch the unborn ghost,
what I’ve built disintegrates like a bloody wall.
Gorgon
Certain things should be approached
side-on, with a darting gaze,
as you look at a bright goddess
from the corner of your eye.
My mother is a figure ablaze
at the edge of sight; I cannot bear her
head on. I need a sickled blade.
I need a shield, mirror-bright.
Delicacy
You do not have to be a delicacy.
You do not have to be tasty.
You do not have to submit
your body into feminine frailty.
You do not have to ruin your digestion
in an attempt to be digestible.
Your mind can be full
of ice-white rage;
you do not have to be kind.
You do not have to yield
to the pressure to forgive.
Forgiveness does not make you good
and goodness does not require it.
You do not have to exhibit grace,
not in anything.
You do not have to make yourself
a morsel,
not for anyone.
