CODA: (Bird of Paradise)
footnotes to Everything is a Deathly Flower

prelude: the tale of two leah’s
behold, a vision. the first of the leah’s reveals that I am an exquisitely sensitive thing. leah lakshmi lifted the three striped veil and taught me a hard femme poetic. this is my lineage. but the knot is hidden somewhere in a confession booth, ringed by marimbas, somewhere in bedfordview, babe. if all good stories have a desert in them, the second of the leah’s reveals that I’ve always been dusted and dancing, staring outward toward the ochred quiet, waiting for god to touch me. seven is a small number, don’t you think? for the deadly sins? t’avia, sylvia, katherine, hortense, wink at me: europe can be the exotic one, if you know how to look. this is the thick line of my lineage. it is long, and infinite. we might as well pick it up here. I thank Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha. I thank Leah Horlick. I thank Noni Jabavu. I thank T’avia Nyong’o.  I thank Sylvia Wynter. I thank Katherine McKittrick. I thank Hortense Spillers. I thank Octavia Butler. I thank Sol Plaatje. I thank Bessie Head. I thank Olive Schreiner. I thank J. Logan Smilges. I thank Richard Siken: for showing me the Way.

letsatsi
this winter, it would have been (it will be), ten years since my sexual assault. it’s been ten years, and i’ve been an awful lover to the Sun. a small tour of footnotes, written in pencil, stretched like rope, to give air to the spell. benoni was founded in 1881, in the first ecstatic moans of johannesburg’s gold rush. black hands on shovel. black hands on shovels. black hands. CAConrad ushers me this way quick-quiet: bring the body with you, when you think. it’s slower, but gives breath to the lungs of the poem. benoni: branched to jacob and rachel (benyamin), jacob renamed. what an invocation. prophetic, hm? son of my sorrow, or in other translations, “son of my pain”—rachel was dying. benyamin (son of the right side). the bible is a hand drum / (catholic apostolic churches) for women draped in white and blue. near the bottom left of the page, above the 10th commandment, the corner of the page devoted to childhood and empire, the line begins: In school, you meet a man named cecil john / and learn the word pioneer. the 1820 settlers, mostly british. little cecie, misplacing his death drive on queen & country. DID YOU KNOW? jehovah’s witnesses are encouraged by the men-manned panel of the governing body, to work 70 hours per month, preaching the word of god. If you work 180 hours per month (and above), you’re considered special. (special). leviticus (pardon the jumpscare) 18:22: “[Men] shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female, it is an abomination.” 20:13: “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act.”

interlude: epigraph I
nakhane’s piggy boy’s blues saunters into the frame, soaked in it. signal and signify. we begin (again) in the ocean. in its terrifying silence. if you want me to talk about time, i could. but it wouldn’t help us. we are dark and currentless. still, in the deep, bedded by black bone. the yawn of the atlantic is a moan, if you know how to listen. when it opens its mouth for you. in milton’s words: “Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend /Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while, /Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith /He had to cross.” the fabric of everything is a queer silence. what i choose to say. j. opens their mouth, sighing, “queer silence does not always indicate an absence of rhethorical action but may instead point to the existence of signifying acts that go unattended again and again.” fleshing, j. smiles at me across the table, between sips of tea, skin gleaming in the sun, an exquisite reminder: “Silence is substance, an act that can work alongside speech or entirely alone, conveying its own messages.” queer silence as pandemic form. k’eguro macharia & j. touching hands across the table, touching gaze (gays), gazes. I soak the text in queerness because it’s all over my black hands.

phalaenopsis (moth orchid)
longest blooming. pinned now, by kaneohe hands. chloé reveals the text beneath the text, if you know how to look. serpentine. you can soften the blow, bird’s eye the violence, if you camouflage the slur. suspend the dagger, redly. this is what you do when you write. during a mid-1750s voyage to china, swedish naturalist peter osbeck, a apostle of linneus, is said to have given the moth orchid its name. during a stop in java, he mistook the orchids for a flurry of moths.

lobelia (take a seat)
let the threshold be crossed. there are 69 species of lobelia erinus, native to south africa. lobelia have pale purple, bell, or trumpet-like flowers. many members are poisonous. they contain a toxic principle: lobeline. in victorian england, lobelia symbolized malevolence. receiving a bouquet signalled ill intent.

morapa-šitšane (for survivors)
cape honeysuckle. tecoma capensis. also trumpet-shaped. red//orange. they’re survivors, very hard. they can survive through long periods of drought. basotho use it treat to fever, sleeplessness and pain. it’s a breath in the middle of the book. it’s toni cade bambara’s question: are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?

interlude: epigraph II
in rwanda, there is a desert that spans 100 days. april 2014 was the 20th anniversary of the genocide. juliane asks me about the dogs at the door, the ones haunting the book. what sound do they make when they bark? for day 61: juliane writes to wangechi mutu across a veil, whispers: Incredulity is a soft-paced / wonder / & in the thick of day / memory is a slippery thing

gazania (treasure flower)
bright, yellow, striped daisies. sunlight. drought tolerant. known by other names, all of them I’m fond of. “moon glow”. “copper king”. gazania grow in namaqualand. prof. tshepo’s piece sits beside me here, tracing the brown lines of my left hand: “lefatshe”, in a low register, telling me an old myth about a young woman and a snake named monyohe. gazania also grow in palestine.

portrait of a bean contemplating suicide
the second of the leah’s sings a breath of air into the big tent. giving me a joy of the octosyllabic. femme magic. jewish word witch. word work: “sugar on the rim of the glass”; “greener than the foot of the sky”

little monarch
john chau was a 26-year-old chinese-american missionary and adventure blogger. the article i read tells me in a matter-of-fact tone that he was inspired by robinson crusoe. repudiation and desire. wind at your back, blowing you to the shore. vancouver touches hands, over the unsilent ocean. in november 2018 arrowed to february 2019, john chau journeys to north sentinel island. he belongs (to all nations). They say that the missionary’s body was pierced / on the beach, now drawn by rope across the sand. // I wonder at the sound, maybe a child’s wired wheels / on tar.

I was a quiet territory walking,
I was a delicious border, inconveniently occupied,
terra nullius but cuter, brown
and boundaried by reservation.

interlude: epigraph III
i’m in a café here. the bright yolk at the centre of everything. deyan meets me. in fact, this is their second entrance, but we’re not counting laps. we’re here now. we’re allowed to take a breath. we’re allowed to stretch out and breathe here. deyan’s beard’s been growing, and he’s so chuffed about it. it makes me shine. he reminds me how warm a stone can be. spike the milk with something french and strong. hazelnut. confession again, except the barrier is a mirror. mister was right, about the enemy. how rivalry is reflection in the field of desire, but when cis people touch it, they poison us with their grief. anyway, this isn’t about cis people. akwaeke unpins each blossom: “ritual, religion, sacrifice, magic – this is the spell”, while leslie tell me to hush, sunned by red light, having remade myself boy, neon, unthroated. deyan’s tattooed lyrics, spoken by a velvet-voiced phox, after the exodus, through the thicket: evil will find its own demise.

difaqane
seqiti’s war was in 1867. the gun war began in 1880. both wars destroyed mohale’s hoek. the scattering begins, in its historiographic fog, in 1815 until 1840. mohale, moshoeshoe’s brother, settled in mohale’s hoek in the 1880’s. before this, the land was looked after by the san, the baphuti, and the basotho.

baroma 1:26-28 (redux)
(26) Ka baka leo, Modimo o ba neeleste ditakatsong tse dihlong; hobane hara bona basadi ba fetsotse mokgwa wa bona wa hlaho ho etsa ka oo e seng wa hlaho. (27) Ka mokgwa o jwalo le bona banna ba lesitse ho etsa le mosadi ka mokgwa wa teng, mme ba tjhesitswe ke ho lakatsana; banna ba etsa manyala le banna ba bang, mme ba amohela ka ho bona moputso o loketseng bolahlehi ba bona. (28) Mme erekana ba sa ka ba hlokomela ho tseba Modimo, Modimo o ba neeletse moyeng o hlokang kelello, ba tle ba etse tse tshwanelang.

the night-room
in kits now. not far from where i wavered at the water, approached by two witnesses asking to drive me back to campus. wobble of an ache older than any of the darkest materials. darker than anything joseph conrad could summon from the bottom. sweet as peaches, that kind of bliss. kelsey gets up and reads jeanann verlee’s lessons of loving a prophet. it’s a list poem, just like you love them. danez opened the window for you, and kelsey too, in the moment. kelsey holding the book, intoning like a greek siren, the warnings. danger, ahead.

epigraph: prelude
let this be the part of the braid that I can change. shift the pattern. i drink buchu in my tea, with honey. my right hand itches, reminding me of what i am. akwaeke reminds me that the beginning of the spell is to face the work. i turn and face it, give thanks, kiss its face, and approve. ke’a dumela. siyavuma. holding a bright sun in my mouth // singing.