Yallah habibti, move your tongue like the sea

easy. My big sister teaches me to ululate, rolls

her tongue in waves. Dips thin fingers inside

my mouth to pull out mine, stretches it long

and pinches the tip. Watch, we move tongues

like this. I see the walls of our father’s house

collapse and we swim free leleleleleleleleleee

On the ferry to Tangier I shriek across the sea.

Practice how to sound like a real woman. Old

aunties grab my buttocks, smush their breasts

against my back and sing leleleleleleleleleleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Don’t cover your mouth habibti! Only women

on the upper deck, only sea. We move tongues

like this to tell the waves stay back, tell men

stay back, tell the dead stay gone, tell runaway

wives stay gone. They turn me into wisteria

woman, limbs wrapped around poles and thighs

as they guide me. Throw back your head, epiglottis

to the breeze. Salt air burns my hot membranes,

scratches at the tight knots of my chords.

All my life I was told

women must swallow sand 

unless we are sounding

a warning.

Her temple smeared across my walls,

I bowed beneath her stream.

Two arcs of piss & bloody vomit

shot inside the MRI machine.

The half-moon rolled back and she

emerged beneath me. My: too much

brown, too much blush, too many

lashes to heal, rattled loose in a split

mouth like crack rocks. She spewed

a bloody history: my people, her father,

some agony at the West Midlands Area

Conservative Society. When she groaned

Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack,

I tempered the pain—oxycodone

for one, high grade the other, ditched

my beeper in her cradle. Switched scrubs

for straps & animal skins in the back seat

of an Audi TT. I saged my hair with a blunt.

Danced away her ruin beneath a black

girl’s melody.