Danielle Legros Georges was the first and only editor to really take time to help me improve the use of form in my poetry. I am entirely self-taught in all the art forms that I have engaged in, and I was so touched that she even thought to ask me about lineation in a poem of mine that she’d selected for publication. The truth is, I hadn’t thought much about it. And sometimes, when we’ve been doing something for a long time and succeeding based on talent alone, we are embarrassed to ask for help with certain foundational things we may have missed when learning a particular craft. I humbly accepted her lessons, and my poem was much better after we were done. “Learning to Swim” is about building self-confidence, something I have struggled with and that writing has truly helped me with.
Learning to Swim
Some days
the tide of sadness threatens to suck me out
to see the waves who know me by name
I am their daughter
And since they hold all the memories
of stolen bodies, they birthed me on a shore of forgetting
A gorgeous shimmer of blue green and liquid gold light
painted over a mass grave
that foreigners call paradise
I prefer the waves when they are dancing Dinki Mini with the sun
making a mosaic mirror at my feet
a gentle lapping like aunties’ kisses
or a hammock holding, rocking me under a sky so, so blue
it makes it look like a forever good time
But when I weep at what can’t be seen
and only felt,
what can’t be healed
and just this small grasping self,
my mothers cry too
and try to pull me home
I can’t go just yet
A path needs to be cut
a bridge needs to be built
a story needs to take shape
for others formed inside this forgetfulness
the sinking ladder we all climb
linked together
while waiting for wings
They say never turn your back to the ocean
So just sit on the sand
close your eyes and feel
the warm ground and your glorious body,
and listen—
When you are really ready to remember,
emerge again
as a stronger swimmer
Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, artist, and author of three poetry collections: A Spell for Living (Agape Editions, 2020); Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books, 2019); and Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing, 2014). Her poems, essays, and fiction have been widely published in the outlets Academy of American Poets, Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, Langston Hughes Review, and sx salon, among others. She is a recipient of fellowships or grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Laundromat Project, and she is a past participant of the VONA and Callaloo writing workshops. Keisha holds an MFA in creative writing from the City College, City University of New York (CUNY). She is a member of the part-time English faculty at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, and leads writing workshops at Poets House and elsewhere. Learn more at www.keishagaye.ink.