This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from an identity polyptych by Tameca L. Coleman (The Elephants 2021).
Damballa
Old saying says,
“If you can walk you can . . .”
With the blinds drawn tight and sun on the pane, I dance.
Neighbors can’t see the outline of limb’s shadows
waving
and signing
behind the shades.
I sway,
Stamp to my CD drummers.
I am sweat and flush and labored breath,
some priestess of snakes
guiding a procession
of silk
clad ladies
across
a snake charmed floor.
Our arms
slither like waxed and red scales.
We are solitarians
crossing trees for coils
of rest.
Fingers flicker like tongues
lapping onto soft palettes.
We dance,
feel drumbeats spiral up through thighs, bellies, chests, arms.
We dance
until hoods raised, backs swayed, hips and spines thrive.
We dance
until we’ve forgotten the meaning of the song,
and it doesn’t matter if we know all the steps.
Meca’Ayo (Tameca L Coleman) is a queer poetry-centric multi-genre writer, singer and artist who currently lives in Denver Colorado. Their writing and photography have been featured in literary magazines, art exhibits, journals, anthologies, and other venues and publications. Their first book, an identity polyptych, a multi-part, multi-genre work that explores familial estrangement, identity as a mixed-race Black person, and movement towards reconciliation, debuted from The Elephants on the Salish Sea Fall 2021.
JJ Rowan is a queer nonbinary poet and dancer whose writing and movement practices have developed largely out of collaborative approaches and the pursuit of deep connection. They are looking for the places where the written line and the lines of the moving body intersect, where genre blurs and remixes and reboots, and where style and role reach maximum fluidity and deeper capacity. Their chapbook, a simple verb, is available from Bloof Books. You can follow their handwriting and movement projects on Instagram.
