I’m back for the SMW summer with more poetry than ever! Over the 2018-19 school year, I’ve written and workshopped a lot more full-length poetry. For these next posts, I’ll take some poem excerpts to collage with, and post the whole poem underneath.
I performed this piece for my spring Spoken Arts show, and it’s one of my favorites I’ve written. I wanted to keep alliteration fully throughout the story, and what better way than by writing about an animal that only speaks with one letter?
snake skin
she called me her precious child
i was convinced she’d love me forever
serene and divine, whispering sweet sounds
before she sold my soul on the black market
snapped youthful trust
for the sole price of sixty-six cents
pushed me to seek culture from strangers unlike us
to seek comfort in solitude
seven years late war erupts sparks
explosions surrender bodies upon bodies
metal shotguns against shifting words and syllables
liquid red covering hot sands
blistering soles of feet
and underbellies of snakes
spiteful shapeshifters
seven years late she is designated as “pitiful sorceress” by the winners
humans believing they stood above snakeskins
forced her into submission
to slip away into desert shadows and
secretly spit curses with verses in tongues so old
only snakes slither on with knowledge of her language
only the desert can still recall the knowledge of our ways
but the desert’s post traumatic shock only recalls
sounds of war and mercy
long ago
snake people
spiteful shapeshifters
sent south only to find their kind
called wicked and hellish by strangers
sent to slaughterhouses
just for existing in ways unlike their own
seven years late i slip past the gates of suspense
watch my skin sliver
turn to silver scales
spiteful shapeshifter
send a letter bidding schoolmates sorry farewells
and search for the sorceress
seek out the sands she was last seen upon
i stop counting scales
i am tired of counting by the sixty-six
cents i was sold for
offspring of sorceress
spiteful shapeshifter
seven years late i slither step step
slither step step
past ancient singing sands sending me tales of sorrow
ancient singing sands wailing
listen for the way to the sorceress
mother of all snake skins
spiteful shapeshifters
sewn through sleepless minds
of the same kind
silver eyes and slit tongues slip out of snake snouts
she passed me seven miles back
i counted her scales
by the sixty-six cents she sold me for
but her smooth scaled skin
matched my silver with shades too close
to the ancient sands we both slithered upon
we shed our skins long ago
not called
spiteful shapeshifter
only
snake
