Valentines: Two Poems by Omotara James
Fast-Forward: Fat Fuck & Full of Grace
I want to say to her now,
having lived the life she was told
would make her more unlovable
than most, most of her life:
You will remain unlovable
to those who cannot love you.
Eat from the cold dish of this truth.
Your belly will never be flat,
your arms will never be thin.
It is unnecessary to suffer
the hungry imagination
of a fool, still, life is cruel
and all must suffer.
Yes, you will be misunderstood
by those closest—
Even those who dare to try
won’t ever understand
your existence. Why should they?
Humanity is a singular experience.
Any attempt
to make yourself legible
will result in your being
indecipherable to yourself.
You can cultivate community,
but that won’t stop the loneliness,
the dust
the sun
the ache.
You will spend your days alone
and out of reach, but
from your small perch, you’ll see
more of the world than is revealed
to the traveller. What betrays you,
first betrays itself. Within you,
your tiny, perfect suffering,
a fat, unbroken seed.
Ten Days of Looking: Cat Litter
One might prefer a Zen Garden, but the bounty before me breathes.
The pale blue scooper, representative of sky, above this neutral pastoral of sand, khaki, ochre, and beige. A symphony of tans, umbers, ambers, and even midnight hues.
The artificial light from the bulbs of the bathroom cosplay as the sun. The act of domestication, an reinterpretation of return to the soil. Her offerings, a gratitude.
My ungloved hand. My unmasked face. The way my mother's mouth would fix a frown at my lack of precaution, as I hover with age above this pan. It's not that her warnings of toxoplasmosis didn't land, only that my absence of pregnancy burns as brightly as the sun doesn't shine on me.
These oblong, insistent glories. A bouquet for every occasion. Every snack, morsel and meal.
Proof that I am a point on this timeline: a provider, a sustainer of life. Proof that there is a God or at least one soul who can speak to my underwhelming motherhood.
Every clump removed cleanly from the sand is a lump in my throat, and other cavities, that remain untouched and undisturbed by the hand of man.
The days I don't flick the switch, but depend on the ambient light of the hall, I attend to the sandstones by feel. There is truth in contact and weight. For each action, more than one method of attention.
The cat enjoys depositing herself in the same place. The exact same spots. She has found an equilibrium and spatial rhythm: the way I cry, during the memetic moments and hours of the day. My equilibrium quivering across the same musical measures of Fiona Apple’s sonic landscapes.
On my phone, Harry Styles croons in this life, it’s just us. May every act of love be entered onto the record.
About Omotara James
OMOTARA JAMES (b. London, England) is a New York City-based writer, educator, editor and artist. The daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants, she immigrated to America as a small child. Her debut poetry collection, Song of My Softening, (Alice James Books), explores her intersectional girlhood, and has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, The Washington Post Book Club, the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day series and Poetry Daily. Her poems appear in print and online in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, BOMB Magazine, the Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. James is the recipient of the 2023 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts, Cave Canem Foundation and Lambda Literary. She currently, writes, edits and teaches out of her studio in Brooklyn, NY.