Ashunda Norris is a Black feminist multidisciplinary artist with creative work that encompasses film, poetry, archiving, and her own theoretical frameworks. Her art centers the complexities of Black {Southern} womxnhood, magical spiritual traditions of Southern Black folk and Black fugitivity. A two-time Furious Flower Poetry Prize finalist, Ashunda holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the California Arts Council, Brooklyn Poets, and Starshine & Clay. Her work has been supported by the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Community of Writers, and the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute. Ashunda’s writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Obsidian, Taint Taint Taint, Root Work Journal, Fence, EcoTheo Review, Trampoline, and other noteworthy publications. Born and raised in the heart of rural, red clay Georgia, Ashunda is now a bonafide, citified bitch living and creating in Los Angeles. Follow Ashunda on her website and on Instagram and Twitter.
Please Adjust Tracking for Best Picture
I was three days sober
so I don’t remember the color of grandma’s casket
but I can see my sister comin from ‘round a corner
of the white church like it lived in her
green carpet porch steps curved to her body’s bones
my Mama’s face an o as prodigal daughter walks
up to the truck like we just saw her yesterday ‘stead of
two years ago under big city lights
all of us mute except Mama is that..?? oh my baby
git in hea – Shunda move so ya susta can climb in nie
we sit in the hungry silence.
*
before the processional begins my sister
looks lost her eyes a haunting of black flesh swallowed
I wave her over to me ignore the street smell still
lingering against her attempt to smother secrets close
I keep my face off my folks try to think on when
Grandma Ossie took us for joy rides to dairy queen
when I still wasn’t too old to enjoy ice cream
summers with my kin
after the interment I glance over at her
born 17 months after me, she was a marvel
of aggravation as younger sisters can be
we never got along then got along then
best friends I’m a lament now irked by my teen self
refusin to know our bond, yellin at her
for leavin her glasses back at the school heated
I had to drive all the back for her to get them
her weepin wailin dryin up at my ridiculous rage
it was just a ten minute drive back up the road
*
take it all gods if I can have my sister back
as she was
*
at the repass she’s workin hard to convince us
the chicken is good & worth eatin even as
her body tells us she is what the city ate alive
what it used to rot itself whole
my mother marches around the church’s kitchen
shruggin off what we know tearin at her insides
how is it possible to bury a mother when your own
mothering has caved to a daughter’s madness
rest of us all sit there fake eatin solemn in a binding
blinding womb of agony
this is what grief does
tightens family knots
we talk about nothing that hurts.
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