The night my father was robbed
       

I ran downstairs with a hammer & turned on every light.
I said, I hate this country & spat on the ground where I was born.
It isn't this country the Black cop said, writing down the facts
of theft. Back then, I didn't know History's names. I couldn't
drop knowledge bombs. I didn't know Osage burned
around the corner where I was bred & breastfed.
Everybody with the last name Africa was bombed
by the first Black mayor. Complex. & I didn't know Goode
or Rizzo or my own father's youth, soaked in red & wringing.
The Amharic word for terror rhymes the English "shiver."
Fear evokes movement, even if it's just a solitary tremble,
quiet shifts back & forth. I look behind me
& name Ethiopia the promised land.
I still relay its myths, nod along to dead prophecies.
I read half a halfverse about Rastas & thought,
if someone calls a country heaven it must be so.
Who first called the country I was born in paradise?
Who first referred to America as a dreamscape?
Who first felt lucky to be here galloping over all this vast blood?
I trot across the bones of people stolen & people stolen from.
Every heaven kills its citizens when they don't sing.
Alarms cross at the forearms & scream.
My mouth tears meat from bone, gleams
wet over flesh & kisses, greedy.
My lips quiet so they won't cry out.
My father asks what I have there,
in his country. His question is
an answer in itself. A wound heals off-hinge.
I pour all my money into the ocean to sit
still. Gallons of red trundle under earth & I don't move.

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Copyright © 2018 Hiwot Adilow All rights reserved
from In The House Of My Father
Two Sylvias Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission