And then peeling the turmeric,
I said, as a girl-
boy, I came upon a little dirty-
grey bird on the way home,
so I picked up the knot of
feathers and slid it into my tunic
pocket.
He said, that’s odd, so I nodded,
and kept working on the gnarled
thing, but he didn’t stop there; no,
now he says, you know, I don’t know
if you know this, but turmeric is good
for your complexion— yes, I agree—
and goes well with most curries, of
course, and what you definitely couldn’t
know is that it’s perfect for your period
pains— the man with the brittle coastal
accent on Citizen TV says a four-year-old girl was
raped
and her body found in a forest— good for colds,
cancer, diabetes. I say, right, best for unexplained
rashes, for demon possession— and in this moment,
a turmeric root is being pulled from the earth, and who knows
how long it had lain there, that jaundiced thing, killing no one;
certainly a few years less or more than four—
for depression, for three AM ennui, for midnight cravings,
impotence, bankruptcy, shitty luck, and broken marriages.
I drop hunks of the turmeric’s skin into the sink,
mbalam mbalam, and so then he says,
grow up, just fucking grow up, and I think— but don’t say—
what if I, for some vague devilish reason, somehow grew sideways,
like this ginger rhizome here? Instead, I ask, can you change the channel?
Alexis Teyie is a 24-year-old, nonbinary Kenyan writer and feminist. Her poetry is included in the Jalada ‘Afrofuture(s)’ and ‘Language’ issues, and the Black Girl Seeks anthology; short fiction is in Short Story Day Africa’s Water anthology and GALA’s Queer Africa II anthology. Her work is also featured in Omenana, Q-zine, This Is Africa, Writivism, Anathema’s Spec from the Margins anthology, HOLAA’s Safe Sex Manual, among others. Alex co-authored a children’s book, Shortcut, and published a poetry chapbook, Clay Plates, with Akashic Books through the African Poetry Book Fund. She is a poetry editor and co-founder of Enkare Review. Alex also works out of Nairobi as a researcher.