The Geez by Nii Parkes (little red riding hood read aloud txt) 📕

it will be

a woman,

breath warm in light breeze,

her dark shadow skimming ripples –

island bound. You will neither see the fruit

in her lap, nor the seed in the fruit.

You will not hear the song

in her head. It is said

no man is an island, but perhaps

a woman is

because an island will bud,

will flower, will fruit – an island

knows the history-filled caress

of a bone-heavy sea, wet and clean

as glass; an island can hide rebels in its green,

can feed them bread as fruit and red flowers

as liquid; an island

can birth a man.

yorkshire bath displays

(or six ways of looking at a bath with dark brown legs walking the streets in northern England)

i – theft

The damn thing is stolen, he is

carrying it over his head

to evade cameras: cheeky lot,

these darkies, he’s using the overflow

hole for eyes.

ii – migration

See what people will do to avoid paying

for a taxi? That would be what? Fifteen

quid? These immigrants are just tight-

fisted. It’s ridiculous. ridiculous!

iii – africans

Africans! They can’t stop carrying things

on their heads if they try. Imagine

that! Lugging a bath across Leeds

on your head – remember that Yeboah fella?

He could strike a ball like a sledgehammer.

iv – theatre

It’s got to be one of those

new performance thingies. To see

people’s reactions, like. Didn’t you hear

about the one they did in a beetle? I am

surprised that little thing

didn’t fall apart.

v – truth

NIGHT:       A yorkshire man steals

a moment away from the bed, where

his children sleep, to rediscover his wife

in the bath. Her immigrant hands clenched

tight, he adjusts his head to carry

the weight of her pleasure on his tongue.

The contortions of their play, the heft

of his Caribbean roots and the ink of her

Indian know/ledge, wobble the tub’s legs.

It falls to the ground, water sloshing

like the Aire on a windy day. Surprisingly

the children do not stir, do not wake.

vi – summary

DAY:    Buying a new bath is easy, getting

a van on a bank holiday is tricky – and...

hailing a taxi while west/black has many stories;

hailing a taxi while carrying a white bath is

another.

The Furnace

When you spend your childhood bathing

with cold water, you learn – quick

as lime – that soap

is warm enough to hold

back the chill of night

caught in bound oxygen;

that although moving fast will help

it’s better to stay even,

let your body heat find equilibrium;

that the earth takes the full brunt

of the sun’s burning

so it can guerrilla through the veins

of the water system

to infuse your post-football shower

with unexpected joy;

that your father carries the fires

of all his disappointments

under the coal of his skin; that

your mother’s embrace is a furnace.

Inheritance

Sometimes I overhear the muted

susurations of worms bent as hooks

into leaf-rich mounds of soil, the plea

of voices not meant for my ears. It is

gossip calculated as a rocket’s purest

arc, promises slipped into the ears of lovers,

hackneyed phrases like you’re only as young as

you feel – and my mind drifts to you; how

all your life you cried like a baby, never

controlled, your face a network of creases

that mapped your pain. You were my father

and I learned to love you with your face wet.

This may be

a twisted way

of saying thanks

for teaching me that even a life of nights still

whispers the sun’s burn, that the fluid of one’s

tears do not make the body boneless: it takes

strength to show how you feel but not waver

in your resolve, knowing the hourglass of healing

never loses its sand. Seeing you cry as a boy freed me,

pulled me from the vortex enough times to outspin

an unremarkable life: I have walked from light

into the comforts of darkness – rebirth canals –

confident that a path will unfold, the way

one did after I held dark soil in my teenage hands

and cast it on the wood of your departure, the way

this poem begins

with the invisible

prompting of ghosts

and ends with the soft lines of a questing pen,

like the earth cycling with the turning of nematodes

silent as DNA

in the darkness beneath my feet.

11-Page Letter to (A)nyemi (A)kpa

for Kakaiku & Ma Rainey

i - signs

Blood of mine, it is said... it was... an uncle

said someone has to stay behind, to receive

the letters, to tell the story (though not at leave

to read), but we both know that’s a Brer ruse,

a cousin-saving con: you stayed to flatten yourself

into signposts pointing away from where we fled to.

Brown as tree bark, expression wooden, you burned;

loath to give me up, you flamed as my wings bent.

I became wind; you became smoke - I see your signature

before it rains. I pour libation for your sacrifice;

your children sprinkle from 40s for my disappearance.

ii - lizards

It was as old Tom Wilson said later, Anyemi,

safer among the alligators, the swamp’s embrace

making mist of my tracks, shapeshifting my glaze

into scales. It was a measure of my fever that I fled

one white man to fight alongside another, held loyal

for a cold, hard promise. It’s the price of the ticket,

the cost of return: a will folded as achingly as our bodies

when we were tallied and shipped here. When you’re ready

Omanfo, when we sit one day to the agreement of two lizards -

one orange-flecked, the other with an orange band, you’ll see:

I’ll tell you how my veins knew ice to a Nova Scotian degree

iii - passing

One freezing night, in a dream, a pair of antlers

threw shadows hard as jail bars, cut across a wasteland,

blurred my vision. When I awoke I was unsure if the twin

shapes stood for us, but there is a proverb I now know,

Manyo; two antelopes do not solely roam for companionship

- one eats, the other watches. You didn’t flinch at the crossroad,

i’naa nabi, your genius for metaphor already clear as mead -

you factorised the 3/5 skewed algebra of liberation down

to (me - white) (you + white); you chose the plus sign,

you would ghost-pass: if phantoms are white, death is free.

Your cousin got freedom. I haven’t stopped moving since.

iv - earth, wind, water

Your totems hum still in the shrines we nested

in trees before ill winds blew white sheets to anchor

cargoes of wood and breathing greed off our warm shores.

Did we guess, or did we know - to riddle our prayers

into the pores of the