The Yam Peel’s Reinvention Has Nothing on Mine

From Scratch

Because I've seen a yam peel
become flour, I refuse to admit
to my uselessness. My grandma said
if we are not from birth a finished light,
we can be one made from scratch.
I like this kind of (re)making:
food waste spread outside on a mat
enduring the bites of the sun, the
tapering tip of chickens’ beaks,
then all the rage from a blending blade,
just to show the universe it is capable of
thriving. Here, the things we celebrate the most
come to us as a shock. Like yam flour.
Like the luminary my burnt-out body would emerge.

September, or Self-portrait with Hemophilia

for Q.

We are still the country’s 
only butterfly and meadow. 
I am beautiful because 
you say so. I am so close to
believing in my beauty. 
All the women I meet leave 
when my knee blows itself 
big like a balloon. I, 
prolonged bleeding. I spent years 
mistaking the hospital for home. 
I don't understand, whenever 
you call my body an eclipse. 
You say light is not light if 
it's not preluded by darkness. 
That is what makes it sublime. 
That is why I think God is 
not a void. In a recent poem, sapphires 
can also be found around the glasses 
a woman puts on. You looked at me 
in a time of harvest and wondered why 
I was not a blooming orchard. 
I have become one ever since.