Ritual Object
after Willie Cole Through the artist’s eyes, we catch this breath of fire, lifting water up to flight. This dead weight sinks our histories back into deep sleep, hidden away to dream of repair. Waking, we clutch at the real weight of a movable flood, catching streams that pour through metal still cold to the touch. Time takes little care over us. Current flowing, its song sighs across weft, warp, wrinkle, fold. It collars us in its minutae. Iron, pierced for steam’s escape! Ease across what was once shift, now skirt, scarf, shirt sleeve, sheet. Warm what will soon cool. Stiffen what will turn soft. Smoothe our way, and drape us in the dignity of this new day.
Copyright © 2018 by Tsitsi Ella Jaji. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 14, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Ironing is a morning ritual that is especially important to the black communities I belong to, where looking polished is a matter of pride and pleasure. This poem was inspired by the delicious memory of the crisp smell of starch and steam. And by the wonderful artwork of Willie Cole, who has used the iron as an art medium, sometimes burning prints into fabric with an iron's head that evoke the shape of a slaver's ship. The iron, like any ritual object, has the power to transform such elements as water, fire, metal, air into a multitude of meanings, each one as malleable as folded cloth.”
—Tsitsi Ella Jaji
Tsitsi Ella Jaji
Tsitsi Ella Jaji is a Zimbabwean poet and an American academic whose most recent collection of poems is Beating the Graves (University of Nebraska Press, 2017).