Predominantly Wild Imagination
Photo: Belinda Fewings
I hope when they take my picture
I am filtered with bright exposure
so my teeth are ugly and sharp,
yellow edged like a monster who feeds
on the faces of pale children.
I am reminder
of a mermaid people that guided their boats to land
and planted the flowers they ripped from the root.
I eat and hope they smell tarred skin,
Black neck limp and dangling
between leaves like bruised cherubs.
When they die, they will give their brain to science
and flesh to the poor so we can freeze it
to last all of winter, or until another white body
falls from the open wound in the sky.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Khadija Ceesay (she/her/hers) is a queer Gambian poet from Olathe, Kansas. She has her degree in English literature and culture from Pittsburg State University and is currently pursuing a masters degree in creative writing. She has been writing poetry since 2014 about her racial identity in order to understand herself better and owes much of the ideas behind her work to her relationships with family, both good and bad.
