How to Wear Drama – Dzifa Benson
How to Wear Drama
For Audre Lorde, For Edith Sitwell
Only the day-moon witches of Dahomey, wearing
you weighted inside their coiled wrappers of red ankara,
know how long you held your hands closed between
your thighs, how much pepper of disarray you braved
in the shade of a devil’s chin while the holding that folds
your throat into your eye is the dark and open purple batik
of bubu and nerve. Now, you are your own concert of rakish
style, serving skeins of afro puffs entwined with teal trade
beads, a gigot sleeved sapeuse chanting into the mirror
to the clap of drum language and the wax-resist of Audre’s
slant raw silk. If hunters can shoot without missing then you
must fly without perching and find pleasure where the bronzed
brilliance of your flesh meets the quickening of needlepoint
and saffron threads. Because the soft-bellied archives of your
body are barely glimpsed, make sure all your colours greet
every sun with the armour of cowrie shells, theatre and blood.
Poem by Dzifa Benson, commissioned by Poet in the City, University of Liverpool and Loughborough University as part of Poets in Vogue.
