Writer. Educator. Artist.
Creative.
Asia
Rainey-Ani
Oshun's Book of Mirrors
​
A Children's Book by
Asia Rainey-Ani,
Illustrated by Cherie Mays
{Chin Music Press}
Purchase Online
grandmama
said
Grandmother said she came from the country
Where tree branches still hung heavy from noosed cadavers
Where you ate what you planted
Where the Virgin Mary sat in for forgotten deities
She said her mama
And her mama’s mama
Prayed like hands twisting cotton
Said you gotta keep picking even when it hurts
And you work even when you don’t know when free is coming
Said she learned to pray in the dark
Said prayers are requests to everything listening
So be careful what you ask for
Grandmother said I only knew her as grey haired and plump
Said I didn’t know her wild days
Said I didn’t smell her whiskey and gunpowder
Said I never saw her hips sin in slow circles
Said she ain’t always been old but she would keep spring
Just beneath her feet
Said I didn’t know nothing yet about changing
Grandmother said she sat at Woolworth lunch counters
Said she let the spit slide down her cheek
Said it wasn’t hers
Said she let the hate slide off her soul
Said she ate her pie slow
Said she sat down so I could stand up
And know how to get back up when knocked down
Said I better learn to pay attention
To what folks didn’t say
Grandmother said she straightened their hair
Day in and day out with hot combs sizzling like blacksmith irons
Said them women tried to press out their oppression
Said it never did
Said she would only pull the kinks from my hair
On holidays
Said I wouldn’t ever be Shirley Temple
But it was all right to wear these curls
Said she didn’t want me forgetting
The rough side of my roots
Grandmother said they wondered why
She didn’t have no man, now
Said she had a man til he raised his fists
Said when her brothers raised theirs, grandfather
Wasn’t ever coming back in
Said her shotgun stayed stocked with shells
Said love ain’t supposed to make you
Lose yourself in a shadow
Said you better stay in the sun
Grandmother said I was her baby
Said I was sweet-beautiful like brown sugar
Said I was smart like old eyes and thick trees
Said she would hug me as long as she could
Said everybody won’t know how
Said I better move like water
Because ain’t nothing staying still
I can still hear her
When my pots sizzle
When I hum deep in my throat
When I beat back tears
When I throw back my shoulders and lift my chin
When I kick doors in
When I walk as if I am a moving mountain
When I scream
When I pray out loud
When I become something bigger than
Everybody expected
I can still hear her
When I speak words that seem to come from
Nowhere and everywhere at the same time
I can still hear her, while
I become everything she said
I could.