Revolution
Revolution
15 years old and only 15
thousand Ougiya bills.
Wet in my palms
from holding his hand
in a heat like this.
Mauritania stretches into child’s pose,
her back flattening into desert roads. He straddles
a 4-wheel drive on her spine, racing
faster than fists shot out
in fights. Men do not care
if their tires leave marks,
if they drip exhaust,
on her pavement. Perched
in the passenger seat, hardly a bystander,
hardly the kind of woman to stand by her. An accomplice
to this assault. Our lips,
our teeth slap each other, like disrespectful wives,
jaws falling flaccid and swinging like tired men
who exit their women after spitting in them. I was a girl
when he took me for a woman. When he took me.
And I knew better than to love my uncles
or smile back at every split mouth. Always
loved the soft, sunstained, warm body
of my grandmother, the textured scripture
she sprinkles over holy beads. Always loved her too much,
or maybe just loved how much she loved me,
to ask if she’d ever grow tired of folding
her body for men, for religion, for all things in power
under heaven -- the things we’ve been told to cling to as women
to ensure we’ll never be free again or without a fastened knot to someone else.
My cousins will eventually ask themselves why wife and possession are synonyms.
And I have never been so confident in a revolution
than when I hear a Mauritanian woman sing the way
a muezzin calls prayer. One exhale of scripture
so fluid you might agree that God speaks through desert storms.
Each textured breath so powerful we cower
in cement homes and heed his instructions
through barred windows.
The music of North Africa
is all guitar twang and war
accenting drums made from animal
hides. There is always a reminder of sacrifice
in our rhythm. Here. Soldiers hit the ground
in slow percussion. Women flick their wrists and hips
to the raspy alto shaking God’s name like goats facing their butchers.
Climbing an octave, raising their voice like a protest
this country may never know
