13469760.0026.114Absinthe2377-3456Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan LibraryAnn Arbor, MI13469760.0026.114http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.13469760.0026.114ArticleAsaase yε duru (The earth is heavy/holds weight) | donno (drum) | Ananse ntontan (Ananse's web)Ansong (author and translator) Afua11112019261VIBRATE! Resounding the Frequencies of Africana in Translation2019This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.1[Nsa’a- money collected from family members andfriends to help cover the cost of burying one’s dead.Asaawa-Cotton balls inserted into the nostrils of the deadto absorb fluids.Note: In North America and Barbados, African women who were enslaved from West Africa were the largest harvesters of cotton.]Mother, what have we done with earth’s flower?forcing it into holes of the deadand wrapping it around cold limbsnot to warm but to exchange for coins and grief.We laugh with the white man who dragsour hands into the deep soils until we are hoesturning the calm of earth.This cotton pulls children out of our belliesto chains their nakedness.This cotton is the labor of our fingerswe hide under our beds and uncover againto weave a dress, to cover the holes in our skin.This cotton drives away our angelsand brings near spirits with rusted keysto ring in our ears:That if we wanted to be free we could stop picking,that if we wanted to run, we could bury ourselves,lie in the field of flowers, our burial white and softuntil water pours out our holes.Mother, do not fear, the earth itself will drink our blood.At the artifacts show,outdoors, you see a drumand touch its face,hit it right in the middlewhere the leather tears.The red tag says $35but the man selling it seesthat you are drawn to itand that you want to beat it,carry it home with you in your red vanfor times when you arein a room and the treesare dancing without a melodyor when you are on your bedand see how the birdsdip their necks back to swallowlight. You take your hands off when he says$20, You want to get it off my hands?You don’t look at his hands to see whetherhe is responsible for the decay,whether he understands that drumminganything creates bruiseslike drumming the stomach of a womanwho is forced out of her countryor drumming a little boy who carries healingin his arms. You raise the drum,It wears small rings around its waistWhere could it be from?He sees that you draw nearer to it,that you imagine things you woulddo with this drum, under your armpitor between your legs.Whose feet have you draggedto the dance floor? Whose soft rage have you drowned?You beat it one more time and hear it soundecho a song you must have sang for your people.Some frafra woman with scarson her cheeks and a blind babyon her back bends to poundclay into fine particles of potDoes she know this is art?Does she know she is like god?A cloth hugs her naked breastsAll the way to her feet.She has not touched her braids in weeks.Her ritual with clay uninterrupted:her fingers yielding mud to a curveOr licking sweat off her man’s back.
The following poems are from Afua Ansong’s Adinkra symbols in translation series