She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. M. NourbeSe Philip

up tight tight with hope, she own and yours knot up in together; although she tight with nowhere and gone she going nd you, if you keep looking.”

      5When kindly day had dimmed the stars, still she sought her daughter from the rising to the setting sun. She grew weary with her eorts and thirsty too . . .The SeachUp in the humpback whereabouts-is-that hills, someone tell me she living — up there in the up-alone cocoa hills of Woodlands, Moriah, with the sky, and self, and the bad bad of grieving; all day long she dreaming about wide black nights, how lose stay, what nd look like. A four-day night of walk bring me to where never see she: is “come child, come,” and “welcome” I looking — the how in lost between She and I, call and response in tongue and word that buck up in strange; all that leave is seven dream-skin: sea-shell, sea-lace, feather-skin and rainbow-ower, afterbirth, foreskin and blood-cloth — seven dream-skin and crazy nd me.

      6. . . the earth opened up a way for me and, after passing deep down through its lowest caverns, I lifted up my head again in these regions, and saw the stars which had grown strange to me.Deam-skinsDream-skins dream the dream dreaming: (in two languages)Sea-shelllow low over the hills she ying up up from the green of sea she rise emerald skin sh belt weed of sea crown sheFeather-skinlizard-headed i suckle her suckling me at thin like the host round and white she swells enormous with milk and childSea-lacein one hand the sun the moon in the other round and round she swing them from chains let y till they come to the horizon of rest

      7Rainbow-owersix-limbed my body dances ight from her giant promises she reaches down gently snaps my head a blooded hibiscus from its body crooning she cradles the broken partsAfterbirthone breast white the other black headless in a womb-black night a choosing — one breast neither black nor whiteForeskina plant sprouts there — from the mouth mine wise black and fat she laughs reaching in for the tree frees the buttery in-lodged circles of iridescence silence

      8Blood-clothwide wide i open my mouth to call the blood-rush come up nish write she name in the up-above sky with some clean white rag she band up my mouth nice niceBlood-cloths (dream in a dierent language)sand silence desert sunthe wide of open mouthblood of rush hieroglyphs her red inscriptions her name up-above sky sudden clean of white cloths wounded mouth broad back hers to tie carry bear“the voice, the voice, the voice” she whispers she walks she whispers ceaselessly