Say this like a prayer
the same waters that part us
fill us with floodlight
and the womb-flow ages in the eddies
and the contentious headlines bleed
fetid rains of sectarian violence
wrapped around soiled diapers
and other articles of the seeming non-dead
We live and breathe as one
and because of our Blackness
our sex
we are hated
I once stood on a city roof watching birds and children
above and below take the day with their lightness
thinking myself to be one less hatred away from human than you
even as the ugly-eyed clawed the tedium of my undernourished bones
I was a lover of men
While you batik touched, plum crushed
were stripped naked and paraded through public streets
corpsed in the defecation of rapists and torturers/
Transatlantic traffickers forging war’s endless obscenities –
a long neck gourd breaks
and scarred centuries roll out in shrieks
the usual stars become jagged and dim
as they push your voice into underground crotches
and my own songs darken an omen of moons
Illegal for a woman to love a woman in your land
Criminal for a woman to be poor and unloved in mine
We will no longer field the night resembling shadowed death
Fear embattles, engages arms
Veils are blown apart by strong winds of our own making
We fall and stand together against their noise
* Kamaria Muntu is a poet, writer and activist currently living in London.
** Prossy Kakooza fled her homeland upon threat of death after being found in bed with her same.sex lover, which is illegal in Uganda. The 26-year-old woman and her partner were taken naked to the police station where Prossy was raped and tortured.
KENYA
Perceptions and misconceptions: The role of new and traditional media in Kenya’s post-election violence (2007)
Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet)
Alice Munyua