HEARD / WORD | February 22, 2021

This month, AKUA LEZLI HOPE reads “As Yemayaah” - a work of deep, psychic and spiritual resonance for the author. The poem references Yemayaah, an orisha who crossed the sea from Africa, and is depicted as a queenly mermaid.

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As Yemayaah

By Akua Lezli Hope

when i was paralyzed
my two legs felt as one,
sparking something that began below my waist.
disconnected from my will, they floated on their own
in a sea of perception, embraced everywhere
sensate and sinuous.

i swam up from brokenness
into dream, darting in three dimensions
as unafraid of up as down, as skillful with left as right,
my great lungs fill with air
my long arms strengthen with each sure stroke
as I plunge toward my sister,
pink and black leatherback, who does not blink
as we match motions and dance 

and all around me, light
from water-crossing foremothers
who did not fly, but swam and sang
across hidden valleys and buried mountains
as humpbacks do, all around the globe
at once, in a chorus of continuance, history sharing

like right whales, who survived their holocaust,
carry memory for hundreds of years,
outlive generations of miscreants and murderers
unforgotten wounds now mere tattoos and testament
to what endures, and they told me, though land forsakes,
consigns me to the chair, wheels me in the corner

beyond the edge, water buoys and welcomes
and her wide-board crinolined flippers gleam
in dusk, sparkle at dawn, flare at midday,
beckon remembrance,  as she sirens return.

AKUA LEZLI HOPE is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, adornments, and peace. She is published in numerous literary magazines and national anthologies. A third generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, an SFPA award, Rhysling and Pushcart Prize nominations, among others. She has twice won Rattle’s Poets Respond. Her first collection, EMBOUCHURE, Poems on Jazz and Other Musics, won the Writer’s Digest book award. A Cave Canem fellow, her collection, THEM GONE, was published in 2018 (The Word Works).

She’s launched Speculative Sundays, an online poetry reading series. She is completing her Words on Wheels 2020 artist grant project, poetry art cards sent monthly to the frail elderly. She’s an avid hand papermaker and crochet designer with over 130 patterns published. She exhibits her artwork regularly. A paraplegic, she founded a paratransit nonprofit. Her chapbook, Otherwheres (ArtFarm Press 2020) is available on Amazon. She sings songs from her favorite anime in Japanese, practices her soprano saxophone and prays for the cessation of suffering for all sentience.