ChickenBones: A Journal

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your brown lips were dark and purple / calling my name as you always did

from my first breath

 

 

 

Mama

By Asili Ya Nadhiri

I saw you

there alone

cold

with no cover

on a bed that was not yours

renting

what you always owned

just to be here near me

your brown lips were dark and purple

calling my name as you always did

from my first breath

proclaiming the purpose of your life

keeping me safe and warm

there you were

as helpless as I

touching hands but still alone

*   *   *   *   *

Source: Asili Ya Nadhiri. The Inner Recesses of an Abandoning Life: Tonal Drawings Written in Poetic Form. 2004

 

 
 

The language and rhythm of African people have been an obsession throughout my life.  I can still vividly remember the heavy syrupy dialect that impregnated my ears as a small boy, the hypnotic rhythmning of the body movements of African people that continue to sang to me, and the depth of the wellsprings silently stirring inside the language forged in the North American experience of African people.  By means of my tonal drawings, I am trying to actualize this experience-ing for the benefit of us all.

I am Asili Ya Nadhiri, born on August 29, 1944 in Durham, North Carolina and raised in a small tobacco town named Clinton, North Carolina.  My undergraduate education took place at Hampton Institute and Ithaca College, Masters at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and ABD (all but dissertation) at the University of Florida in Gainesville.  I have been an instructor of vocational agriculture in the Orange County Public School System (Orlando, Florida) for the past twenty one years.

New book entitled the inner recesses of an abandoning life by Asili Ya Nadhiri available.  For an excerpt and purchase visit www.hummdrummsung.com

A CD is inside the back cover of the book entitled the inner recesses of an abandoning life; and a cassette tape accompanies the book entitled HUMMING DRUMMM SUNG in soft pedal tones.  Nadhiri Writesasil@aol.com

 

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