STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
KAI NAIMA WILLIAMS
Wesleyan University
High in her element, my girl won’t take no, so answers
“magic.” Sure as this fire escape the same as a throne, a stage,
so we be stars in this dark named October that openly invites wolves.
No wonder she was born when and where wolves are born, moon
rules: we can be somebody, anybody we want in a dark hiding
so ride the woods through in timbs and furs, remember
my body tells a story bolder than flesh parameters, remember
my body a roster of spells. Gotta dig down to wet to sip answers.
Sensing my worry, she reminds me, “This is not a stage,”
whatever changed, changed on our trip to the place where wolves
roam unbothered and belong, we were coming down from a night of moon
lunacy, rubbing friction into cold catskill air and wishing to stop hiding
only to end up back here, backs curved from study, hiding
a crooked j from the officer’s gaze below, while I’m tryna remember
dreaming of NYPD horses bolting, bucking blue, an answer
to anxiety, run. But even fenced in, a girl got enough army to stage
a coup, at least a coven of witches packed up like wolves
“What can’t be outshined by a libra sun and libra moon?”
Yes, it hurts to be a daughter and recall my mother’s moon—
chin wobbling behind the door that helps her boy’s hiding
and hers is mine so it shakes in this dark, but my girl says “remember
in Twitches, a sister’s love is the answer”
love, a spell beaded between one neck and another’s, all mothers staged
in dance, decked in blue, dressed fierce as wolves.
My folks blame the way I eat rice on some wolves
who raised me, if I stick chopsticks in the bowl up towards moon
Ma swats my hand and the bad luck away, no hiding
from ancient curses. Tradition is a quill remembering
flight. America swiped our language, so folk tales answer
what tongues forgot. A moral, a map back to the stage
where I once stepped into my shining name. Tonight, we stage
an escape. Break to a place where men don’t come around again, wolves
satiated with kills not us. Jersey really ain’t that far, same moon
shedding cover here, same moon we be hiding
from inside a 24 hour sauna, slide into sleep under tea light, remember
all bodies in the bath house question beauty, ours two brown parts of the answer
I can’t remember, so ask, “how do I stop hiding”
Within my moon mind, and get back to the body that cried wolves
and meant it. High on our stage, I know her cure before she answers.
after Cameron Awkward-Rich
A person that remains alive after an event in which others have died
is called a survivor. A person that leaves behind shedded skin in Room 603,
redirects chin, cauterizes mouth,over cracked up teeth with closed lip grin,
assures her friend “I’m fine” then makes for the bus stop irritated March
frost numbing over. alone. is also sometimes called a survivor.
Even if she doesn’t yet know the new blue that shadows every palpitation
to be a fresh death drumming against interior walls of breast bone.
A newly dead girl. awakening within foreign time zone across a forever line
in soaked clotheswith chips of ice now crying their way back to liquid.
She pounds on the inside of the breast bone, crying What is this place
demands to be let out. But there are only chambers now.
like in a classroom. the door cannot be breached until someone grants permission.
//
Like black, queer or poet, the term survivor when applied to myself, feels like a label
Not a limb. If foundation, then caked on face. Adjacent shade, paint, blend.
Robes me like the emperor’s fabled fit, thru as in icicle.
Ill fitting as in, in need of safety pin. In need of reinforcements.
//
Survivors often freeze in uncomfortable or dangerous sexual situations. In these situations, they often don’t fight or run, and thus consider themselves at fault. Freezing is when there is a temporary hold of movement.
We been holding for five years. Me and the girl beneath my chest. Since we were sixteen. held by bile. breathless scream. syrup solidifying over hands pinned from the cold. On a
classroom table. Why we still holed up in here? Been dungeoned deep inside ice block body
stuck reaching for the door. But only crossed my arms. Hoped to live. The room is a square neatly trimmed out of daily time & space. Like the Ice Room at Fairway. My brother & I would
scale aisles clean smelling sweetly of meat and cream. I dream I run around the aisle only
to be slammed back down on a classroom table. If I could have breathed I would have seen it frost and pass before me.
//
A girl died by ice and went to afterlive inside the bones of what she’d been before. In her place,
a new girl growled cracks into icicles. Rime eating eyes into tunnel vision. this girl trained. Raced forests shouldering jugs of water. Rain shrieking down her hair on runs. Until she got big
enough to cry for how she’d been conceived. For the deceased. And then she raged.
And sought rage.
And begged for it.
And became a frozen door latched silent
when she made rage come down on her too hard.
And got thrusted open again.
//
When I allude to having survived some thing my inner whip scolds all the girls I’ve been. For each drama don tongue. Too many costumed questions. We each wanted a different life, so we
spun couture out the threadbarest hints and wore it out. Then I weave the whip a true story:
Once, a boy roped his arm around my friend’s neck
and yanked him rootless
while I froze.
He made his dangling feet dance for ground and promised
If I can’t have you, I’ll hurt him.
Once, a boy swung by his neck and it was all my fault.
Our eyes met in the middle of the classroom. The scream with no sound in it. Between, an unshatterable sheet of ice.
//
I cry at Jessica Jones and think this will never
end. The holding. The clock on the wall in the classroom that never crawls. Facts that emerge from my mouths still shape like lies. I paralyze long into night and and practice opening
on my own.
Still, I learn to burn the block. burn the silence. burn the forest. The lake. The ice on top.
burn all March away and everyone trapped inside a gust of cold.
One day I graduate and bloom myself a whispered beach. Warm gradually like peach ring spread red, outwards. Nothing has ended but red returns to fingers, tip of nose a little gold island
shifting strip of tumeric melted. Crushed shells warming past my toes with the wave. Flowing. Rising. Ebbing. Over and Over. Keep on
Cause when this breaks then flood will come. then I’ll face up sun. Not gone.
Kai Naima Williams is a poet, spoken word performer and fiction writer based in New York City. She is the author of the chapbook HE TRIED TO DROWN THE OCEAN, I WAVED published by Hyacinth Girl Press. Her work has been featured in Mask Magazine, DRØME Magazine, For The Sonorous, The AmerAsia Journal and Literary Manhattan. She has been honored by the National YoungArts Foundation, the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and the New York Times. She is also a co-found- er and Executive Director of the non-profit arts organization Eat At The Table Theatre Company. You can follow her work on Instagram (@kainaima) and Twitter (@onlykainaima).
