There is no word 
for the woman 
who stays 
when a country is burning 
in english 
there is no word 
for the woman 
lingering at the edge 
of a burnt through world 
eating ash 
suckling on the light 
of living grief 
sustaining 
one of herself 
for the man 
who is the war 
and is at war 
and is the nation 
and is the nation pinned 
on the beach of bloodshed 
on the plains of plenty 
army’s thunderous march
hammering the bounty 
into the axe 
with which to sever 
cord from 
smith 
there are no words 
to offer sisters 
of the wild 
they say 
man 
they say 
lead 
they say 
vitality 
they create 
conjure manhood 
in the pursuit of 
itself
while one of herself 
makes pursuit
of the place where 
violence cannot touch 
beauty 

she destroys 
when the moon is full 
and stalks when the moon 
chases reflections 
the woman who stays 
behind becomes 
mythology 
becomes the bread 
in the stomach 
of an unborn child
in the garden 
that belies the forgotten 
she worlds language 
she says 
from what she knows
“breathe” 
and births winds 
to calm the flame 
and bring seeds 
and startle 
the reeds to song 
she grows life 
freely 
she grows 
center 
she goes 
to work 
the hard work 
of coming home 
when one has never 
left. 

Oshun Baronville is an emerging trans-disciplinary artist, oral historian, doula, cultural worker, and curator based in Washington, DC. Their practices across disciplines draw from ancestral groundwaters, continually swelling from the fount of Haiti (Ayiti) and Pan-African confluences of art and scholarship. Baronville’s commitment to storytelling is born of a desire to build worlds contingent on collaborative labor and a belief in the transformative power of beauty, play, and belonging. From the detritus of this world, they seek to empower their communities to practice the Afro-Futurist, Afro-Surrealist, and Black Feminist tenets of maroonage, coalitional politics, emergent strategy, bricolage, tidalectics, and—most urgently— to dream wide awake.


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