ONLY LANGUAGE CAN HOLD US TOGETHER

only language
can hold us together

i watch the women
bead their hair
each bead a word

braids becoming
sentences

she would
never comb her hair
it was always wild

like new poetry
it was difficult
to understand

she would enter
rooms where old women
would stare & mumble
& bold ones would say

"where's her mother"

she never understood why
no one ever understood the
beauty of her hair

like free verse
so natural as conversation
so flowing like the french
or spanish she heard or
overhead she thought she knew

"i want to go to
mozambique" she said one day

combing her hair
finding the proper beads
after so long

"i want to go to
mozambique" she said

twisting her hair
into shape the way her
grandmother made quilts
each part separated &
plaited

"i want to go to
mozambique or zimbabwe
or someplace like luanda

i need to do something
about my hair

if only i could
remember

the words
to the language
that keeps
breaking in my
hands"

by E. Ethelbert Miller