Illustration by @iggdeh
black body as a sexual tool
power between dichotomy
leave me no more
wax dripping from back
water falls off head
ricochets candelabra
a sound like sshhhhhhh
why make it
make me stay here
the right side of my back
my lower back
(it is clumped
heavy with wax)
my nipples drag hard cold
how much time has passed?
harness as an accessory
to a small pool overspilling
under a smile above pruned-toes
when you strap this black tool
squirting spitting crying:
i can go for another hour
even on all 4’s
shepherd like messenger
or torturer, really
flood in the corner flipping palms
under wrist and paper
towels slopping mop
drags in the joke
desensitized satire warms irony
please move the ladder
Na know nuh care
milk ducts spotted round
in ah ‘em favorite part
ah me gelly glides over me mound
wih di hand of ah Black ‘ooman
she tell me: its ok so me think: Me ok
eyes husk like so
me see her b4
me know her starrr
everywhere ‘ooman Ethi
kin’ like King Haile Selassie
eye-video se’ play back
round tools in me womb:
-sucked ‘way life
-seh fi she start anew
-assistant comes in the room
-eyes roll a while lids shut
-makes me cum ah while
poked 2 times ah many
IV wrist uprooted
from terra cotta roofs
Black riseth above thee
british man *encyclopedia
wrist leak of hibiscus
pussy-smell like sorrel an’ me eat it up
anise, ginger, cinnamon,
orange peel
*language/words/information was always of major interest to me as a child. The encyclopedia was a personal centerpiece of mine In the Jamaican household in which I came from “lickle pickne to big woman.” We had some version, or volume, whichever it was of the Encyclopædia Britannica. I read that it was originally published in 1768, but I’m not sure which sort we had. The hardcovers of each book were dark blue with gold text. They took up a lot of space. For most of my life, I perceived myself to gravitate to the encyclopedia. But thinking back it was more of a pressure-romanization like “grandma what’s [some thing]?” “look it up in the encyclopedia. Find the letter and read.” While it was a source of some of my early development, there is a lot of colonialism and white supremacy tied to those learnings. Super interested in the “broken english” language spoken in Jamaica known as patois. That thousands of people which proximity to whiteness were enslaved, and taught to speak and uphold English. I guess they weren’t good at it, but developed their own personal dialect. Many latinx, indigenous, asian, and white Jamaicans also speak in other ver of dialects. So what is broken if descendants of enslaved people speak a language incorrectly yet find themselves still attached to the language. As a latinx Caribbean writer fluent in English, language tools like syntax, and punctuation, run-offs, grammar etc are really not important to my artistry, but rather tools to dismantle and unsee. Don’t always want to proofread and perfect.
Mayah Lovell is a Black lesbian latinx from suburban-area D.C. Her artistry grounds in transcendental trauma beside Black queer ancestors and awakened by practice of fantasy, radical love, and ritualism. Mayah is also a Biologist researcher in both Genomics and Immunology. Her studies are synthesized by cultivating essence through mixed materials—natural, auditory, visual, performative, and text. Mayah has exhibited and performed prose art in Philly, Baltimore, and D.C. Her writing appears in Peach Fuzz Magazine, Coven Poetry, and Stone of Madness Press.