3 poems

MY LIVER, THAT UNSUNG ORGAN

I want your mundanity packed up neat and solid,

wrapped with blood-stained butcher paper. Lover,

please bore me to tears, bottle parts, dry the rest,

make a cocktail, let the salt coat the rim.

I can’t give you my heart, dehydrated minuscule thing.

It has known the mortar and pestle, it has known the wind,

but you can dry me out, peel the thin skin from my chapped lips,

let me hear it crunch between your teeth.

I will promise you my liver, lover.

I’ll take the scalpel, pierce my skin, crack my diaphragm,

save those bones for the marrow,

allow the soul to escape in forced gasps,

pinch my kidneys, shake them like dice, coat them with lucky moist air,

toss them to the side, yank and tug till the liver shakes loose.

It is weary, my liver, that unsung organ, working double time,

processing stress and liquor and hate,

scavenging oxygen from shallow breaths,

battening down hatches before hurricanes.

If you can promise us no excitement or terror

or alcohol-drenched veins,

if you can be there, constant and sensible and quiet,

when my hands shake in fear of pen, wild men, mirror, and dentist,

if you can promise me warm nights full of bland rice and grey stew,

with no more bile, no burns left in my throat;

then give me your brown sheets,

and I will wrap us up neat and solid,

my golden liver with my boring lover,

processed and pickled and dried for feast.

 ASHES TO ASHES

My grandmother wove my hair into the tightest patterns. I had to sleep pretty and feel my heart in my head. When I do my hair now, I lose my nails to my scalp. Scythes sacrificed to a rough harvest. I’ve drawn blood with my naps that water my edges. I’ve ripped at the root and woke up naked. When I do my hair there is a spitefulness. An artlessness. There is no musicality. Where is the staccato beat that my grandmother composed with a rat tail? My mother shaved her hair once. My aunt’s fell out. My roots call out to me in my nightmares. I ignore them. I wake up to fallen branches in my bed and a flood on my fingers and a confused rhythm in my skull. I sit in a seat for hours, allow someone else to beat my hair into submission, so that I may then transform myself as well. So I don’t have to awake to a forest fire. So I can be reminded to nurture the roots. So I can sleep pretty. My grandmother can’t braid wisdom into me anymore. I have to fend for myself. Force my hands to conjure her spirit. I wish for her callouses to replace mine. I want the wrinkles she never got to show off with pride. I want to sprinkle her ashes into a cup of warm milk and consume her whole. Then I could have her rhythm. They sealed her urn and I am thousands of miles away. She can’t hear my summons. Grandmother isn’t here anymore. My hands aren’t hers.

AUNTIE ZORA VISITS ME AT MIDNIGHT

Zora first appears because I call her. I have

conjured her through repetition. “I want to

talk,” I say. Really, I beg. Colored folks is

branches without roots. A phrase I’ve repeated

over and over. Rolling it over my tongue,

swallowing it down. Throwing it back up.

Searching for meaning. When Zora visits that

night, she gives me none. 

She appears in the corner of my room,

cigarette in hand, hat slightly tilted. I am not

startled by this phantom. Because I want to

talk. She has the slightest smirk on her face.

She takes me in. 

I think, Maybe I must ask the first question. I           

think, I must break the silence. I think. I must—

—She moves first. She comes to sit next to my

bed. Then stands over me. Blows cigarette

smoke in my face. She places her hat on my

head. She finishes the line. And that makes

things come about in queer ways. She leaves. 

I don’t conjure her the next time. I am lying

on my bed. Once again weary. Lost. I feel

my future and I feel my race heavily.

This is when she comes. 

Her cigarette is lit again. She wears no hat,

but her hair is carefully pressed. She waits. 

We stare at each other. Me laying and her

sitting. She seems too big for the confines of my

room. I stare.

She waits. 

I choke out, "How did you do this?"

She says I am not tragically colored. There is

no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor

lurking behind my eyes

I recognize the admonishment. Wrong

question. I am ashamed but I ask quickly before

she can leave. “What would you have done had

Ms. Alice not found you? How can I thrive in

this place without my own

Eatonville?”

She says I am a precious gift. She stands. She

twirls. She says How can any deny

themselves the pleasure of my company?!

I stand. I reach but stop myself. She continues

to spin. She wants me to join her. I do not move.

I will not, cannot, move. 

She says, There is something damned up in

you. She says, You take up the pen when you

are told, and write what is commanded.

Zora comes to me. She guides my body. She

takes my hand. She moves my pencil. 

She says I feel my race. I remain myself

She says I am the eternal feminine

She says I am going to sit right here on this

porch and prophesy

She says Love is like the sea

She says people can be slave ships too

She says there are years that ask questions

and years that answer

She says those that got it can’t hide it

I move. I dance. I write agony into the world.

I repeat after her. And after the women who came

before. I know I am what’s next. I prophesy.  

Exquisite Armantè is a writer planted in Atlanta, cultivated at Louisiana State University and transplanted to a MFA program at Oklahoma State University. Her work has been featured in Scrawl Place, Hobart Pulp, Black Warrior Review, and more. You can find more of her work or contact her at exquisitewrites.com on X @exquisitewill, Instagram @exquisitewilliams and bluesky @Exquisite.bsky.social