mahadai das; ounce or space
she wanted me to see the pakaraima mountains wash my body in the essequibo taste the
elder spirit trapped in bilimbi take the bones dripping cassareep plant them in an
anaconda & place it underneath red earth for sixty days das grew to eight feet once &
chopped bloodwood trees drinking the sap to mother strong children she’d never have
from a house on stilts in the east bank demerara she uses the blunt end of glass from
a broken rum bottle to chop off all her hair dragon-tongued spitting sarte she’d wear a
crown a glamourising gem leading hoards of hungry housewives clutching shine pans to
their chests mixing elixirs to kill their unfaithful husbands screaming through the streets
our days are numbered! get an education! to the river bank we go to feast on the tears
of colonizers & metemgee eddoes fat as basalt she proclaimed to be a womxn of
the fire pretty smeared on the wall of a cave lift mahadai from the quaking stone coffin
that cannot contain her place her among the bellflowers a proud mouth sending shock
waves to a hyenic heaven