A Bloody Penchant
Undoing is a red song
Billowing between what is divine
& What may be an overflow
Every month / I aspire to perspire to acquire
Whatever those fancy speakers
Say in their motivational talks,
To damn my body
& conquer this world
To make my waist into fennel
& pretend the current flowing
Between my legs is not a
Madhouse — I go to church
& There is prophecy about painless periods,
Since the Holy Book says
God has a penchant for women / In blood & pain
I move to the altar
I go to make my case— {Isaiah 41:21- Bring forth your strong reasons…}
A preacher once said it was not
blasphemy to make case with God,
So I kneel & I say,
God, The Brahmaputra river in India
Turns blood-red for 3 days in June every year,
Gracious God, Why give a woman's rest to a river?
But how much of putting words together
Is saving me from seven days of overflow
When a woman’s body is an emmenagogue
My uterus is a bounty hunter,
And every month I must pay for not bringing
A newborn into this world,
Is such a dilemma as birthing / The only way out of this cycle
When my sister bled through a pregnancy / & continued after childbirth?
Today, I pay allegiance to the women lubricating this world into a spin /May we remain
Unkillable {Amen}
A Lineage of Diagrams
I. My soul is a Venn diagram,
An opening,
A pretentious geoid,
Coloured grey & sometimes fuschia.
My body, dense as the full moon
has a potential to become the universe,
But on whose bones will the galaxy be built?
II. Is a body not an equation?
solving for a percentage of warmth
In this cold world,
III. Every bone on my body is ice
Every vein,
a pie chart trying to rotate
Like the sun
IV. If I divide my body by 360
& I multiply it by my years
Will I find my lucky number?
V. Will there be someone whole enough
to even me out?
Is a soul mate not an odd thing?
VI. In this poem
I am trying to reconcile the origin of my body -
the spirit as solution / the lineage as a puzzle.
VII. I want to know
At what point my soul
Will tire from my body
VIII. Is it from the gravity of my breasts
Or the sags on my hips
IX. Is it from the grey of heartbreaks I could
Have evaded
Had I loved without my body?
X. I am trying to see where I can return
When my body stops feeling at home
XI. & If I call my body 'A'
& my soul 'B'
Does A n B
Mean a fusion born of heaven?
XII. Is 'n' my soul
Or is it something
My life's baggage is too beastly to set free?
About the Author:
Roseline Mgbodichinma is a Nigerian writer passionate about documenting women’s stories. Her writing explores the intersection of nature, womanhood, emotion, bodies and desire, and how they exist and function in society. She is an alumni of the Library of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) West African Writers Residency programme. Her writing has been published on Isele, The Willowherb Review, Agbowo, SprinNG, Native Skin and elsewhere.
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