Origin Myth With the Word “White”, and: Untitled (Eating Lobster)

Abstract

Origin Myth With the Word “White”, and: Untitled (Eating Lobster) Ama Codjoe (bio) ORIGIN MYTH WITH THE WORD “WHITE” My dead grandfather is quiet, he learned to be quiet in a white church next to the white house where his maternal grandmother delivered him with hot water clean rags and castor oil the only church for col- oreds in Hayti Missouri No cards No jax No ball throwing No running on Sundays so that when his father shot a white man and had to get out of town and when those white men came looking for Big Daddy they asked my grandfather Boy where your daddy at and they said If you tell us we’ll give you some candy and he knew how to stay quiet and maybe my grandfather didn’t know where Big Daddy went but he was quiet either way and Big Daddy went south instead of north to trick the white men and sometimes he’d steal back to Hayti and leave before morning and when Big Daddy had enough money he moved his son and wife to Memphis Tennessee he went south instead of north to trick them and when my grandfather told this story he would laugh and slap his knee he would slap his knee and laugh. My dead are mostly quiet but sometimes they tip back their heads and I can see all of their white teeth gleaming. [End Page 842] UNTITLED (EATING LOBSTER)* You hold the claw like a harmonica, suck out the sweet juices, search for the tender meat. Your hands and teeth make music. You separate the tail piece, arc the back until it breaks. The lobster, bright from dousing, is the color of hot candy. Your plate is a clutter of shells. I reach for the crown of your head hold it like something that will not break, loosely, like something that won’t escape. Before the pincer was in your hands it held its prey tightly. [End Page 843] Ama Codjoe AMA CODJOE was raised in Youngstown, Ohio, with roots in Memphis and Accra. She has received fellowships from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Cave Canem Foundation, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and the Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellowship from the Creative Writing department at New York University. Her Pushcart Prize nominated poems have appeared or will appear in Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, Pluck!, Washington Square Review, Apex Magazine, and elsewhere. Footnotes * after Carrie Mae Weems Copyright © 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press