Collection: 'Things That Are My Own' - Balekane Legoabe

Invocation Written by Sarah Lubala

in which the ancestors are returned what was not given / in which our bones remember the dust and air they are made of/ in which memory holds the weight of all stars/ in which we are burdened by our own light/ how we belong to the names we are given/ and by our names / we bear their charge/ say agwang/ ashina/ kura/ say i am the shadowed howl/ i come by claws / by hunger/ by meat and honey/ as the livid wound/ as blood red//dolence/indexed: / small fires of the bottle brushtree I summer's hibiscus/ bright juice of the pomegranate/ split sweet/ overripe mangoes/ milkwood fruit/ the fevered neck/ the leather/ the warp/ the woof/ -delive//red / i rise from earth and water/ awake/ awake/ i mourn/ i bless/ i wail/ i bend/ betwixt/ i/ you/ every creature of flesh/ - praise be/ the slow current of years/ the soft cave of the mouth/ the language of sight/ black scars of the eyes/ two obsidian moons/ the petroglyph of the body/ skin like use-worn ochre/ muscles stretched over rock/ lines tracing the unseen/ the shape of what moves and holds/ - draw me from memory/ as the buck bounding from the trap/ as the wilderness of a long season/ rising like spirit-smoke/ if you call i'II come/ - close/ closer/ between the salt and the cut/ between the skin and the seam/ - say the incantation/ wood of sorrow/ flint of want/ ash-white spark of ache/ breathe me out/ sigh river alive/ i am whale-fall in the tide of your lungs/ name what swarms the sea of you/ the cheek between stroke/ and stroke/ the soft bread of palms/ kissing in your (grand)mother(s) tongue/ hips that move like confessions slipping into an attic room/ bruised imprints of touch/ gestures that cradle/ that rock the atoms of us/ into the crinkle of time/ into life/ into death/ into the coming of dawn/ and every dawn to come