DJEMBE

~

SALT

~

DJEMBE

after we finish/she gets up/pulls back the linen/and begins
tapping a morse message with her Bic/a djembe telling me secrets
her body didn’t reveal/i would yield to sleep/but then she’d prob’ly think
i was one-of-them-triflin’-brothas/so i stay awake to steal a piece/later/of her mind
divinely fitted to mine/she’s drum/i’m lyric/ she fits my lines/i call her to me/she doesn’t 
speak/brushes her neck in a whisper/taps her collarbone in a crescendo
calling me close/we are slaves to this rhythm
she guides me in the direction/of her north star
palm to fingertip/each beat beckons/i’m so glad, my soul’s got a hiding place
her words are shelter/in shadows/they take me/into the maze
of her underground railroad
a trail from her indented navel/to the rise of her chest/beating its promise
of her kiss/i don’t know where i am/just read her like braille/eyes closed
feel it like soul/in my bones/she makes me move

 

~

SALT

currency of living;
we swim along its waves 

is the heat of his chest
pressed clammy to her back;
curled like cooked shrimp
into her.

is 

stomped into his spine;
pennies, nickels, dimes
spill
from his head bludgeoned into the earth;
a payment
floating toward the light
of a bird watcher’s binocular shadow
cast on the tide;
a net seeking crabs dips up
the bounty worth more than it ever was
in life.

 

 

To Top

Darlene Anita Scott’s poetry has appeared in anthologies including Homegirls Make Some Noise, Growing Up Girl, and Role Call and has also been featured in international publications including Love Poems for the Media Age and X literary magazine.  She has received grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hurston Wright Foundation, and the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica.  Scott is a native of Delaware and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.