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My Ancestor Who Learned To Read By Staring At The Bible
O LORD, listen! Look,
hear, how each aching alphabet
lashes my throat.
My O is fear & a trembling
kiss I grip
your spine
and am fed by your flesh
every L I take:
my tongue to Your backside.
Again, another O
as I lay my lips on you, again.
Like hands
my jaw jacks the R,
this D thrusts
the roof of my mouth
when You’re in me, makes
off with my breath
on the way out
every night
I sacrifice
this soft palate, fold
trachea in prayer:
LORD, let my words articulate
what the body wouldn’t dare
pronounce
may the young purr of my voice
roar into maturation
after you have come all over me
give me strength to sermon
what I can’t swallow,
O LORD. Turn
my clapped cheeks
the other way
make me holler
Hallelujah!
Amen.
Because what is climax
if not a resolution?
Your every Word
make my body chorus. I can’t
be sung back into submission.
Ashanti Anderson (she/her) is a Black Queer Disabled poet, screenwriter, and playwright. Her debut poetry chapbook, Black Under, won the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today, The Rumpus, and elsewhere in print and on the web.
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