After Etheridge Knight
When Hugh Masekela died
I thought of you / it startled me like a trumpet
instead of Heaven I got sent back
to that sticky dancefloor in trenchtown
where I sipped blue fluorescence
desperate for the electric buzz
of your attention –
fuck Nostalgia and brass
fuck madiba makeba fuck jazz
fuck history and the ties that bind
fuck the fingers that play and
your hands that mapped and digitized desire fuck
what it could’ve been and fuck what it was
it comes back to me like a chill
like a song played sharp and shrill
Hiwot Adilow is an Ethiopian American poet from Southwest Philadelphia. She is the author of the chapbooks In The House of My Father (Two Sylvias Press, 2018) and Prodigal Daughter (Akashic Books, 2019). Hiwot is the co-winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and is a fellow of The Watering Hole, Anaphora Writing Residency, and VONA. She holds a BA in Anthropology with a certificate in African Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Read more about her at www.hiwotadilow.com
