Doyenne 

Aunt Deborah’s bedroom: baby shower curtains, 
Packed ready to go luggage under, 
Nonprofit office shirts secretly caging her green card. 
With holding our refugee lives in NorCal. 
Under her king mattress are blue containers 
With my kindergarten school pictures. 

The girl: brown ashy textured lips, permed straight hair, 
And a bloody chemically exposed scalp. Her blue and grey 
T-shirt displaying an innocent Black patriotic girl. 
Her silver smile mimics a person with tooth ache. 

Her replica was stamped in Mr. Green’s classroom
In 2010 for the suburban community to romanticize. 
That girl was still imagining the green plantains and 
Cassava trees. 

Her mother: a lanky 29-Year-old, with yellow eyes
Hinting malnutrition. She is remembering her youth
Of dried lentils mixed with United Nation canola oil. 

Now my eyes linger in the mirror watching Ma age. 
Last night Ma went to bed at 7 filled up with zinc. 
My molars peek from my gums reminding me of adulthood.

 

When My Cousin Stevie's 4c Hair Is Acting Up 
She splatters watery styling gel in her tight African curls 
demanding to meet her naive father in the 1920 style kitchen. 
She asks her stepmom for native ingredients she will never use 
looking on her flip phone for her grandmother's phone number. 
The neighbor's doorbell rings for their new nanny. 
Stevie goes in the bathroom for an organic tampon 
returning to nap in her father’s children radio room. 
Her REM sleep shifts her kinky curls into miniature Bantu knots. 
In her boyfriend's car she sprays raccoon graffiti 
on his brand-new windshield. Rescuing her grey journal  
from under the driver seat, she mistakes the mailman for the hired  
Black guy at the used bookstore. At 9 pm she is at the Baptist nursing home
washing fine China. Meghan at the back of the room dissects her abdominal pain. 
At home the plastic lab cup preserves yellow pee 
for her physician. In the sink Cherokee tomatoes smell of the rat  
who attacked her in the ungodly hour. She eats the pepper soup  
without pascal celery. Sundays she steps off the train's stairs to her mother’s 
mature hair.

About the author:

Rosine Selemani is a Congolese American writer. Pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Writing & Publishing at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Selemani explores her African identity through her American upbringing. Her current work in progress is a poem, short story, and essay titled “Nehi”. 

Feature image by Hanin Abouzeid on Unsplash