We are Sudanese children's bedtime stories.
Their mothers feed their daughters dreams instead of grain
one day, they say, we will rise on the horizon
green tanks and desert camouflaged soldiers
bearing peace, and guns
and flour.
It is a country of women and infants
waiting for their husbands and sons to set down the burden
of the cross and crescent
and come home.
Waiting for us to save them
they grow boy-soldiers like the crops they lack
boys who will learn to fight to save their faith
by martyring themselves to their oppressors
and cutting the breasts off enemy women
to starve their newborn sons.
Waiting for us to save them
they cultivate the soils of their daughter's futures with hopes of American salvation
fueled by CNN headlines and photojournalist's faces
they pray that their stories will become truth
rather than proof that their struggles remain nameless.
We came before
bearing the flag of our self-declared freedom we burst open the gates of Krakow ghettoes
and fleshed out the white limbs of concentration-camp survivors
we freed the Jews from genocide and tore pink triangles from the arms of those we would later make outcast again
and so we are Sudanese children's bedtime stories
They do not understand that we only bomb when we are bombed back
and then fast, and thoroughly,
and sometimes at the wrong country we do not support genocide
but if brown-skinned people are killing
brown-skinned people
we will not put our children on the line
America is the only thing worth dying for
we are not coming
and there will be no fairy-tale ending.
They tell their daughters we are coming
as their bellies swell
as if they have fed them the moon
and they dream, sometimes, of leaving their children behind
they could flee faster, and surely they would be forgiven
from the safety of the stars
but instead they wait
for a rescue that is not coming
for a hope that is too silent, too foreign,
and too black
to ever be answered.
"Sudanese Children" is excerpted from Obatala by Shannon Leigh. Copyright © 2007 by Shannon Leigh. Used by permission of author. All rights reserved.
Indie finalist at the 2007 National Poetry Slam Championship. Featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Author of 3 novels and producer of a hip-hop album.
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by Shannon Leigh
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SHANNON LEIGH has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and has performed alongside Sage Francis, Talib Kweli, Saul Williams and Taalam Acey among others. She has performed in over twenty states and two continents, is the author of three novels (Tetrarch, The Skin Tree, Isaac and Malachi) and produced a hip-hop album, Sanctuary, with Austin’s DJ F. Scott Godot. She is a cellist, cave diver, photographer, polymath, and linguist and is a film producer for Atlanta-based Triple Negative Films. She is a pedant and an obscurantist, a lover of strange words, a sometimes spirit-worker, and a practitioner of Krav Maga, the official fighting style of the Israeli army. She was a member of the 2007 Atlanta Ark Amok Slam Team and took 3rd place at the 2007 National Poetry Slam Indies.
by Shannon Leigh
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