Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2018 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, Tsitsi Ella Jaji's second full-length collection of poems,
Mother Tongues, is a three-tiered gourd of sustenance, vessel, and folklore.
Table of Contents
- Mother Tongues
- Table of Contents (i)
- Dedication: Our lingering embrace iii
- mother tongue (1)
- 1 On the Isle of Lesbos
- Our Mother of Stone
- Daughtering
- And They Didn't Die
- In Praise of the Great Cat
- * lingua: corral
- Five Bagatelles
- Fingerings
- flare
- Symphony Dinner with Piano Soloist
- Blue Note
- Bandwagon
- Cooking with Miles
- Relaxing with Miles
- * lingua: tongue-tied
- Tell me something good
- A Song at Dawn
- Auxiliary
- Prelude to a Kiss
- First Guardian of Flight: The Angel of Time
- Second Guardian of Flight: The Angel of Refinement
- After Tonsure
- * lingua: ladyfingers
- Ethiopia Stretches Forth Her Hands
- Manual for Initiation into the Zebra Sisterhood
- Electioneered
- Old News
- After the Coup (or Not)
- The Crystal River
- Profile
- How I Write
- * lingua: good tast
- Real Simple
- Way Out West
- Autumn Leaves
- Marvin in Stereo/Right Ear
- Marvin in Stereo/Left Ear
- morning, 11.9.16
- Burying Willie, Our Lion
- Malick Sidibé's Camera Calls
- * lingua: gorgon
- Benin Bronze
- Unaccompanied Minor
- Children's Swings
- Pond in Museum Garden
- Ritual Object
- The Body Counts
- at war
- Wildcat
- * lingua: a quick tongue
- The Graves Suite
- Ballade: Thyroid Goes Rogue
- 3 Intermezzi for Unaccompanied Thyroid
- Misterioso: Iodine 131 Meets the Royal Thyroid
- Cadenza: Thyroid Rides Again
- Koan of the Great Cat
- * lingua: babble
- We are the darker sister
- Boy Lotus
- Three Lessons on a Friday
- Stumbling Block
- Facing El Greco
- When Thomas Finally Rolled Up, I Said
- Infinitive
