In memory of Sonia Mills (1939–2025)
Shi Stay
You. reconfigured
in my
head.
ranting eyes—the shrill
all over curses. High frequencies
cracking me.
The caregivers say:
Ah suh shi stay!
we are dealing
in
moments, and
you are—
someone i used to know.
i stuff my otherworldlies
into a bag—
You. limp embryo
in sheets.
when i open your room door
and move toward the pink petals on
the silk night dress
i gave you ages ago.
i cradle You. brittle bones, and
drop next-time-tears—
wet.
smells of You. not able. The caregivers say:
Ah suh shi stay!
Coward of the Country
to be sovereign
resonates like
a felt headdress
on top
and cowboy boots
on the bottom
In the middle—
high confidence. Tits
draped with a breezy, flowered shirt
my guilty pleasure
bucks its love of country music
and jumps over its shadow.
City Psalm
for Benjamin Zephaniah
we tie our hearts
and knuckles
grey
braving the wind—
in this cold city
in this concrete
in this concrete version of Gomorrah
where
where so unsure,
the weak pulses
pulses of freedom—
that we try to feel for
come
in jump-starts
We are tumbleweeds, rolling
doomed
to life—
I think of one of my favorite poets the one with the gap between his teeth
A toast, to Ben.
Benjamin Zephaniah
toast to the hour,
of our abandon,
Life.
Mek we
rewind and refresh
Jasmine Tutum is a Jamaican Gabonese interdisciplinary artist and the author of the recorded poetry albums Share the Flame (Universal Egg, 2014) and The Other Others (Jahtari, 2023). Her work has been published in An Anthology of New Work by African Women Poets (Lynne Rienner, 2013) and has been featured in Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts (2023). She is currently working on Makela Space, a radio research platform organizing sound, music, and words exploring resistance music from Africa and its diaspora.