TJ Dema
THE YARN OF THE HIDDEN SPINDLE
THE YARN OF THE HIDDEN SPINDLE
This is what they say
Once in the long ago
Inside the city of Silica
After the last of the silkworms had died
We turned to food for clothes
Not for barter but to take
And make dresses of milk
Fuel of corn, residue of the edible oils
We had depleted our selves
And could no longer sustain emotion without an act
All day caramel coloured, cane hands pulled corn out of fields
At night without a tree in sight
The heavens would fall, until morning
We lay blanketed in life’s per kilo fumes
For the first time more humans died around the world
In a day, than just
Africans moulting in poverty with its mundane and petulant hand
Then one day, we pulling
Out of the fields came a man with a crown
Of husks and palms you could clean see through except for the children
All yellow brown and golden who were born with needles in their eyes
Their mothers’ thighs webbed together not with thread but lies
From fathers who flaxen
Wilting under the day clay
Had long since shed their secondary duty
To become camouflage men again
You see, they told their blind sons and daughters
We could not carry more than one title, more than one name
And so they chose they who had a choice
To be only men
Once we saw we were dead
Mainly the ones in skirts with our young
Littered among the living as though we too
Were alive
Fear sent forth phantom fingers
Winged as mercury, foraging messengers turned mercenary
Afraid the mirror had a mouth
Man and his motive found only shards
With no one to see, Silica had shattered
Those who looked beyond that wounded city’s shuttered eyes
Say they saw a mountain of spindles
Cob webbed
All that wood unused
Sat still and sleeping
