Sister Academia
For Shona and Jo
At Uni – they placate young heads from getting washed away upstream
River runs deep within The Cities; rivers of blood shed from knife's gleam
The barriers; what gates have kept us from knowing ourselves: what gates
These worlds we come from, land on which we soil, birthed with no shame
I call myself Bartholomew; I identify you as Bethesda, but we are not that
Childhood traumas we endured, brought us to this pedagogical kingdom
Self-prompted from ideology; histories where his story, her story conflict
We don't separate Indira Gandhi and India Arie, Jomo Kenyatta, Kid Capri
Large rooms where brooms sweep each student under desk; they uproot
Denounce colonial conduct perpetrated by order, supremacy, entitlement
This rebel theater: Shakespeare rewritten, where the lauded dream down
Robespierres among us, we look to other cannons for determining the truth
Sisters adjoined among academia's patricians, their speech riot is message
With these words, they rake the commons of idiomatic hate, stained walls
Without which cycles repeat, rivers run deep waters over students of color
Sisters, for us, each a rose, undoing damage, upholding right to be human
