Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and media strategist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014), Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books 2019), and A Spell for Living(Agape Editions),a multimedia e-book that includes music and Keisha’s original artwork, which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for Agape's Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award. Keisha’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. In 2018,Keishawas selected as a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence. Keisha holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from The City College, CUNY. Learn more about her at www.keishagaye.ink.
Other Sagas on the Wind
Be who you want to be
but accept the weight
of the chapter you play
because this story
churns itself
on a rhythm
too big for your vision
an epic that
unfolds like a luminous bloom
seeding other sagas
on the wind
and you are the
living water
the catalyst
giving life
to shape
How many other worlds are
waiting
now, just a whisper
an idea
of a different way to be?
We star surfers
stretch ourselves
are not content to
to see from just one
angle
are entangled
in a beautiful veil
hiding our own face
from memory
What can we next
dream into being?
What does a new story
require?
Can it be a love
that doesn’t destroy
when it spins off kilter?
Will the smooth surface
of stillness become our mirror?
I Am the River that Stood Up
I am the river that stood up
and walked into a story
that called me by a song
sounding like my name
I stepped into
a saga cemented
by suffering
set in a loop
a lit fuse
to a bomb
that blows us to shards
whenever we try to remember
the route
that grew us
name the stones that
damned us
And who can stand up
as only half a thing?
We are an echo in our ancestors' ears
even now
because all that has happened
is happening
still
And they look out onto the unfathomable sea
for those dragged into its wake
by greed
bodies breaking onto shore
to seed another place
faces fading
melting into a mirage
that haunts the horizon
a half formed picture
dissolving with the day
an amnesia slowly
reforming the mind
But there is no time
and no end to water
It always finds itself again
becomes more
it is will
it will
spread out
sink into earth
shed the sediment
of small men
stomping through lives
led only by their own
misunderstanding
Water has memory
will spring up into new stories
meander until
it works its way into cold sweat
at 2 a.m.
and fragments of a dream
a half remembered face
in the blur of unexpected tears
the smoky scent of embers
and pained feet
that transport you
from a New York City street
to Cairo
at the speed of thought
recalls the heaviness of a child
and breasts laden with milk
Trying to place the disjointed mosaic of me
looking for a pattern
waiting, listening
restless seeking
for someone
who knows how
to read the letters
put them all together
make them
make sense
And then I hear/feel
a kind of laughter
a patient something
that answers only to say,
when you are still enough
for the blue/green bird to bend
at you banks
for her morning drink
and watch her go off
to dance in the sky
then the constellation of journeys
through time
all the rivulets and waterfalls
that carve the worlds
from your mind
will come together
massive and shining
and show you her whole face
the very same you
you thought you misplaced The Shape of Sweetness
Sit here for a word
they say
and memory
undiscovered trickles in
a cool wind
gliding across my cheek
a rocking as if
on a gentle sea
heralds their message
mostly: keep going
and listen to us
with your whole body
Will you comply
this time?
Plug into a river story
flowing from a waterfall
unseen
a swirling blackness
that you know is home
I am still being born,
my ancestors say,
still opening my eyes
Help me bloom this life
into flight
unfurl like the shape
of sweetness
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