“In so-called Green Pastures”

Creators of Justice Award 2021 | First Prize: Poetry

Sophia. N. Ashley (she/they) are writers of poetry & fiction. Winner of the Bkpw Poetry Workshop Contest 2021, & Pushcart Nominee. They have works previously published in NativeSkin lit Magazine, The Quills Journal Nine, Stonecrop Review & elsewhere. They are the author of "Dumb Mandate". On Instagram, they are @sophiaashley631.

I.

Maryam’s creche tongue bludgeoned pink.

limbs cauterized.

somehow dumb & handicap at once.

hair tarnished with ashes. brows shaved beyond cognition.

mouth, heaving kelly green. lungs retaining the R-coloured vowel.

II.

our mouth-to-mouth puff: the resuscitation that jogs her organ.

Uncle, neck deep in pastiche maths.

aunt toweling Maryam— for all her name carries,

& how she lose color when found inna different compound.

III

dem backstreet girls chorused “chameleon! if she stepped on coal,

as though black was a stain they wouldn’t end— if given a chance.

my distraction; the crime scene.

IV

whatever took her hostage as a teenager

leaves with us a fresh gash

as aunt sought her by her pronouns, asking every she/they her whereabout.

V

when from that gash, a different wound amount to all the corners it didn’t take place.

all the latrines dem backstreet girls didn’t dip her head in.

didn’t knock her out with a toilet brush & rough faucet.

didn’t smash the shower head on her teenage loin,

shredding her young bowel.

ache beyond incision, beyond ruptured bandages & lip suture.

beyond the vicious blood clots and raw hemorrhage.

VI

sound approach & falls off her mashed earlobes.

nothing comes close to it’s razored meat.

the chopped eyelashes and swollen bag of pure white were nobody's plaything.

Uncle laced our drinks with depressant, to lessen the trauma.

all man to his poison: Killer Xanax, Thug Valium & Murderer Pentobarbital.

VII

still, what doesn’t tuck in is: no one asked for this.

we ask that our sisters be loved.

VIII

but love permits Pardon— which shares a letter count with Trauma.

& wasn’t she just six when all these happened?

IX

seeking refuge leaves one with refuse.

the nomadic uncle bears a portion of this madness,

aunt with bilingual ducts

& the voice behind this weeping sestina.

aunt grieved too well, we doubled her diazepam.

X

I faith the stubbornness of the woman with an issue of blood, Lord!

let this loss be our last.