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Jasmine Koria Poem
The green-blue marks of the tufuga's* tools run down his thighs
Patterns in shades of deep-ocean-dark and unsealed-road-like lines
Back to his ancestors and forward to his descendants
He is young and good in a way that makes it impossible to imagine he might ever become old
angry...
drunk.
He speaks quietly like the 'shhhhhhh' sound his teachers made when he laughed too loudly as a child
His skin is brown like the soil used to be
and soft,
like it still is,
underneath the white man's concrete.
*Samoan tattooist
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
To the memory of my brother
Sometimes,
I sit all alone
And think of you.
I close my eyes-
Close them tightly
And remember sitting beside you on those wooden buses that only Apia still has
I see you lying on the old bedframe without a mattress
And taste the fizzy-sweet Coca-Cola you’d buy for me
I hear your laughter as I smile
At the memories of running after you with a broom
And all your long prayers at lotu* time
Prayers.
When I think of prayers I think of you even more.
I wonder
I really wonder
If I said enough of them for you while they still counted.
Brother,
Did you know I prayed?
Prayed every day and every night
for you?
I wonder, did you feel my prayers?
Even on that last night in your cold motel room
Dripping with despair
Did you know I was praying?
Did you wonder, even?
I wonder, more than anything
If
As you took your life
You considered not doing it
Maybe…just for me?
Just to keep the promise you made that I’d never be alone
Or did you just go...?
Without even wondering
If I was wondering
Where you were?
Sometimes,
I sit all alone
And think of you.
*Samoan word meaning 'evening worship'
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
Maybe he ate his vitamins and their minerals and oranges and apples all at once again and again
Or ran laughing down the rugged rocks of a ruthless reality
Maybe he flew singing up to the cold concrete ceiling on a chair
Or drank dated dark liquid from a damp factory dumpsite
People think his lungs liked lighting the lily-white smoke they lived on
And I’ve even heard he sullenly slit several sections of his wrists so he could sign a letter
Maybe he jumped joyfully in front of a jeep window that had Jesus joining hands with Judas for prayer
Or pressed the pallets out of the pistol till the pieces pierced his parched throat
Maybe he took tablets off the table till they took their toll
Or cut carelessly into his chest’s cave and coincidentally revealed his heart
People say he bashed his brains out with a baseball bat
And some are sure he sucked in air and sat still till his stomach swelled
I say he lived life and loved and loathed
Living always kills you too quickly.
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
At the station Paton stares at me from the train bound for Johannesburg
He leaves a note to remember to mop up where the roof leaks
This is after the British take Achebe and I's gods away
before sitting back down on their buttocks
When I take their son in Taylor draws my black skin being thrashed by the wind
I feel the kid burying me before the ship comes
I resurrect, thanking Wendt for at least some power and glory
before stupid maggots come and eat up my winnings
Orwell hires me to feed his pigs when I'm broke
I want to kill them when they stand up on two legs and talk back to me
Smith and I meet at Catholic school and ditch Boys' Club together
His brother catches him and I hide across the street as he gets a beating
I run into Fitzsimmons who's looking for Les Darcy
I tell him, 'I'm not his girl, go ask Winnie where he went'
They make Ihimaera and I run errands at the family gathering
I tell myself we're either cousins or enemies: don't fall for him
That same night Huxley and I get high on soma
He passes out on the beach and I run back home to sleep it off
The stabbing wakes me up in time to tell Selby to go tahell
He gets up in my face and tells me plainly to be honest with myself
It's strange after that...just me and Bukowski waiting for a bus
He puts up with me and I fall in love with the pungent smell of him.
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
ocean meets brown sand
year-long heat like this skin
burns lying post-cards
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
My hair fills the circumference of itself
And takes up space with little help
It goes the only way it knows
In tightly bound cornrows
In church the preacher talks about my hair
To entertain everyone there
Saying 'comb out your unchristian naps!'
Someone says 'Amen' and claps
I cannot change the cross-heavy volume
But no one hears over the organ's tune
I turn the locks into a twist
Can't wear my church hat with hair like this
My hair fills the circumference of my life
Till there is space for nothing else about me.
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
Some mother
Under a dark blue spring night sky
looks out her simple window,
past the old curtains which she’s had since the kids came along...
She’s washed all the little plates
And counted One, Two, Three girls: all home
Thank goodness!
But her boy,
where is he?
He isn’t answering his phone
Hasn’t been around much since he was fifteen
She’s worried. Poor boy.
Where is he?
Hey, mother!
Here is your son-
He’s up to no good again
Flipping the finger at white-collar job tired passengers who are going home by cable car
He’s talking loudly about smashing this and that and
and so and so
While you hope he’s on his way home.
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
tausala
__________
eating disorder
taking orders
Victoria's secret reject
colonial Monroe Mead's muse
tausala
sacrifice
crucified with White Christ
a stab in the side of black Tagaloa
language dying like the ozone
flower crown
patriarchal thorns
**
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
Your life support machine
The church bells
The tyres of the hearse on mud that still looks like the soles of your shoes
The choir
Grandma's flowers falling onto your casket
The curious indifference of birds on a sunny, beautiful
Morning
Cameras clapping for you
Your brothers talking
Friends breathing out cautiously
Lace falling over the glass just above you
Concrete rolling home
My brother breathing in
My heart beating
Still.
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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Jasmine Koria Poem
Overcrowding is like a box with too many other boxes inside it
People These
Are people
Everywhere- are
In your
The kin:
Hallway Who
And is
Around going
The rooms... to
Even tell
Behind Great-aunt
The to
doors move
WHERE?
Three’s never a crowd in the third world
Copyright © Jasmine Koria | Year Posted 2018
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