Akusua A. Akoto: Three Poems

Mother’s Dance #1

Mother does not
Want to dance alone
Come child
She’s trying to bring
You into the music
Of her tears

Her mouth is bleeding
In the center of this prayer.
There is no water
In her dance
As she stumbles for
Her father

Her hands are aching
And in her plea
For salvation
She is naked

As hands touch her
She knows
She will be raped again
Under the Lord’s prayer.

Mother’s Dance #2

In this broken mind
I am all the love
She has
And from her great pain
I am her miracle.

Out of pity
I left a war
Where she turns her weapons
On herself
And cries to God’s children
To stop laughing at her.

Somehow her body has aged
As a hunchback
Still hearing God’s laughter
Over exhausted shadow

My uncivilized exile
Treads her last year
Barefoot.
Treated as an imbecile
Her imagination for
Self-destruction
And salvation
Are legendary.

Like a Child Painting

In the eyeball of hell
I can live in the
Devil’s sight

What do I see?
God is distant and
Beautiful

In the hour of hell
Suffer, suffer
His children have
Risen up
Against you, mother.

Split minded child
You are somewhere
On these streets
My faithful animal to
Christ.

You fight your mind
In a world
That hates you
You beg for mercy
In a world
That is unkind.
You go hungry
In a world
That beats you up

Suffer, suffer
Bleeding, bleeding
Laughter

In the hour of hell
You can see nothing
But the Lord.

Akusua A. Akoto is a spoken word poet, essayist, and speaker on homelessness in Colorado. Currently working on a manuscript of poetry focusing on relationships between black mothers and daughters, madness and survival. She is also working on poetry that looks at police/military and government brutality and resistance. 

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