Mamalicious!

Please enjoy the following poem/gift/love offering from Christina Springer. I don’t want to say anything more about it, because it speaks for itself.

You can treat yourself to more of Christina–”poet, performance artist, mother of two, organizer, administrator, playgroup founder”–and her wonders at Springer’s Journal.

1. The Motherboard

Worse than the taming of contrary kinks by curlers, blow dryers,
chemicals and magic combs, where those wretched days

when my mother took her crochet hook; looped my Will,
Drive and Desire to thin solid titanium bars and Tungsten wires;

then a scorpion swarm of prophecy skittered from her lips -
almost an I.V. drip of venomous wisdom slipping inside

whispering: Pain wastes time. Tears wash away opportunities.
Leave them for the weak. Only this will save you.

Off she’d send me: to school with a 102 degree fever;
to volunteer, to hand out pamphlets for her political candidates;

to networking lunches; to my desk until I could literally pass a test
in my sleep. I should have had those tungsten and titanium bits

removed by psychic surgery. I believe
some days. Even the therapists agreed.

What Black woman would ever have enough time
to untangle and rewire that curious jangle of historic

circuitry? Antique lace ancestors, frayed patchwork wisdom
pieces, funnyhouse mirrors, electric goddess charges,

Great Horned Owl feathers, mortars, pestles,
garden seeds in cracked fragile yellow envelopes,

toilet water, hand made brooms, fused yarn, metal,
faded saints and eulogies on ripped parchment bookmarks,

and a Hail Mary. Mothers conjure then install
these motherboards protect their own.

(Christina’s reflections on this poem are at the end of this blog entry.)

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You are in the midst of a blogathon celebrating 32 Days of Black History! Yvette at Six Impossible Things…and I are joined by InkogNegro,Christina, Chris,Tami, and Mr. Shadow.Visit, comment, bookmark!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm and is filed under 32 Days of Black History, Books and Writers, Cool Stuff, Friends, Fun Times, Mama-hood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.