The Alphabet Changes Direction
- The Alphabet Changes Direction
In the Valley of a Thousand Hills you knewyou were close to the sea and the sea,to the landlocked, a leviathan, sourceof salty healing waters brought backin old Coke bottles. Shark-backed,sardine-shoaled and crashingonto 'Whites-Only' beaches.The heavy dawn of your childhood.
I was afraid, even terrified.
Rain falls now, across an ocean,a continent, your own life,and the peaks you lurched againstare empty but for thin wisps of smokeyou've given up tending.And you hear, across the daysyou call your life—you see it, a road—you hear a new weeping
I shut my door, I covered my eyes
as this woman lies down like a child,that man burns in a crossroad of fevers.They claim him, they name him.What stalks, shakes all languageand the future tremblesfor the sweet coinage: life.B will not follow A, but makes wayfor an I who may D for die before S for syndrome.
I averted my eyes, I closed my purse, Yes (guitar chord), I admitted nothing. [End Page 13]
Yvette Christiansë is a poet, novelist, scholar, and librettist. Her volumes Castaway (Duke University Press, 1999) and Imprendehora (Kwela, 2009) have received numerous awards, as has her novel Unconfessed (Other Press, 2006). Her work has been published in the US, South Africa, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Her book Toni Morrison: An Ethical Poetics (Fordham University Press, 2012) received honorable mention from the Toni Morrison Society. She is Chair of the Department of Africana Studies and Professor of English Literature & Africana Studies at Barnard College.
