When/Wherever You Find Her
by AVA TIYE KINSEY
in Spring 2020
Heather Polk, Black to the Future, 2019
For Schomburg, Clarke, Carr, Watkins-Beatty, and Beatty
When he found Her,
His eyes were not yet cloaked in unseeing
He, still full of youth in its majestic innocence,
Sat reverent at the feet of his father whose speech hugged Ss and sliced Rs sharper than a machete's sure, steel blade.
Father uttered a re-membered past
And handed Her to him
Situating Her right side up.
Father had dug up Her grave, and found that Her parts had been flung like chicken feed across the blood-leaden, blue mass
Father found the way using the North (South) star left behind by his Ancestor and saluted Her before he broke through the arid soil that held Her
Father found Her there buried, but, yet, undead
She sat slumped, disfigured—
Scarred by the knife of a cruel and foreign initiation
Where Her tongue had been cut and Her thoughts had been muted,
She taught him to read Her mind
He found Her voice there
He reveled in Her wisdom and astute character
As he listened,
He heard the whisperings of millions
Saying another was still to come,
The forecast would come to be when the sun,
In its radiant brilliance,
Passed through his second quadrant
In the meantime, he was to re-member Her
Place Her head were they had buried Her feet
Lay Her dead in entombments of pink stone and gold
And re-cite their lives' testimonies to their children
Who had fore-gotten their way before they came here
The ancestor who chose to answer the call of the forecast
Cloaked himself in flesh and found his way through
Appalachia
and
Tundra
and
Cities of brick and mortar
To Her feet
There he found him,
Him who had studied from the father,
Who had found his way to Her by way of ancestor
Him,
Now entering his sun's third phase
Was now the Father
And he, the one who She uttered into being,
Brought to him two others
Twins who, too, would re-member Her
The presence of things hoped for
Was now evident in new-Father's unseeing
He handed the mantle from his shaky, now-feeble hand
To his son
As his sun passed into its final phase
The three—
Son and Twin—
Vowed to re-member Her
In the membering,
They assembled those whose suns
Had yet to break the horizon,
This time around
They re-member Her
Piece by piece,
Parcel by parcel
In re-membering Her,
They remember
Ava received a Bachelor and Master of Arts in Africana Studies from Howard University and Temple University, respectively, and seeks to make it her mission to magnify indigenous cultures as a means to liberate and commune with herself and others. Ava is a mother, a partner, daughter, writer, friend, sister, and a descendant of warrior women. She is an associate editor of A Gathering Together.