the blueshift journal

The Night My Father Was Robbed

Hiwot Adilow

​

I ran downstairs with a hammer & turned on every light.

I said I hate this country & spat on the ground where I was born.

It isn’t this country the Black cop said, writing down the facts

of theft. Back then I didn’t know History’s names. I couldn’t

drop knowledge bombs. I didn’t know Osage burned

around the corner where I was bred & breastfed.

Everybody with the last name Africa was bombed

by the first Black mayor. Complex. & I didn’t know Goode

or Rizzo or my own father’s youth, soaked in red & wringing.

The Amharic word for Terror rhymes the English “shiver.”

Fear evokes movement, even if it’s just a solitary tremble,

quiet shifts back & forth. I look behind me

& name Ethiopia the promised land.

I still relay its myths, nod along to dead prophecies.

I read half a halfverse about Rastas & thought,

if someone calls a country heaven it must be so.

Who first called the country I was born in paradise?

Who first referred to America as a dreamscape?

Who said, I’m lucky to be here galloping over all this vast blood?

I trot across the bones of people stolen & people stolen from.

Every heaven kills its citizens when they don’t sing.

Alarms cross at the forearms & scream.

My mouth tears meat from bone,

gleams wet over flesh & kisses in hunger.

My lips quiet so they won’t cry out.

My father asks what I have there,

in his country. His question is

an answer in itself. A wound heals off-hinge.

I pour all my money into the ocean to sit

still. Gallons of red trundle under earth & I don’t move.

​

​

~

Hiwot Adilow is an Ethiopian-american poet and singer-songwriter from Philadelphia. She first began performing as a member of the Philly Youth Poetry Movement and is a former participant of the Brave New Voices International Poetry Festival. Her poetry has been featured on CNN’s Black In America, NPR’s Tell Me More, and Wisconsin Public Television. You can also find her work in Wusgood.black, Winter Tangerine Review, Nepantla, The Offing, and Duende Literary. Hiwot is a 2016 Callaloo Poetry Fellow and a member of the First Wave Hip-Hop and Urban Arts Learning Community at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studies Anthropology and African Studies.

portrait of his fist

Emma Rebholz

like a bottle of wine
his instinct was
to carry me by the neck

​

beet-knuckled thing
too familiar with the way
skin peeled clean

​

under the simple want
of his pink fingernails
how many nights did I lose

​

to his flask’s cold lip
before he split mine
down the middle

​

chapped skin attempting
to separate from the rest
what’s inside we both wondered

​

how deep will this cut
rupture through
the glass of me

​

how long will I wait
before I pry
myself open

​

if it takes a prayer
then god let me shatter
god

​

let him bleed

​

~

Emma Rebholz is currently an undergraduate Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. Like their favorite cat mug, they can be described as having "excellent design, delicate details, exquisite shapes, and pleasant feelings." Their poetry has been recently published or is forthcoming in FreezeRay, Souvenir, and Maps for Teeth. They probably want to be your friend.