Poems By Ivylove Cudjoe, Videopoem by Jordan Nixon
My existence is everything with me and without me
I miss being a child. Don’t we all? I was among my people. I was home. But adulting has a funny way of plucking the rose buds out for it to bloom elsewhere… and sometimes, so, so, so far away from the fruits, like seeds scattered by a hungry hunter as he looks for game, days, many days, after having left home.
I’m in a strange land and now, I understand that song of being a legal alien in Nueva York. Twice I’m found among like speakers, but twice I’m out- extranjera. I’m neither here nor there, and yet, always here and there. I laugh at what everyone finds funny, but always find myself guessing if I imagined the same thing.
I miss being a child and being dressed up, without a care in the world. I awoke, studied, did homework, watched cartoons and telenovelas, dreamed of Juan Miguels and Oppas with K-series, and went to bed. Life was simple in those days. I didn’t have to analyze a gesture I got from a different skinned person. Everyone was like me… well, mostly…but my childish mind didn’t have to work twice as hard; nor search for the missing words between the lines; nor remember the injustices in the world as often; nor second guess doing number 1 or 2 because I fall within a statistic; nor wonder why people won’t sit by me on the bus, more often than not.
Sit by me
What has a girl got to do
To have you sit by her?
I feel like a plague
That everyone wants to avoid.
Wait! … was there something wrong
With the seat next to me?
That I didn’t see wearing glasses?
I sit and they stand.
I stand and they stand.
Why not sit when I sit?
It’s the same grey on both sides
But I sit and they stand,
And I wonder why.
When I finally learnt that truth, thanks to a reading of “the L train,” I could breathe easy… I wasn’t the problem. It was just one of those things in this strange world I find myself.
El principio end
And as I lay tied to the weights they put on me,
Me calmo mirando al cielo.
The fire went ablaze, finally, ¡libérame!
My spirit soared with the wind, ¡qué chulo!
My dusted ashes mixed with the earth, ¡ay, color bello!
My blood streamed to the aguas, como el arroyo.
Air, water, earth and fire, we became uno.
Y en el momento oportuno,
Like a phoenix, I’ll rise to become, you know…
A new ser humano.
Con todo aquí,
pero sin todo ahí,
sabiendo vivir entre aquí y ahí,
…yo.
Ivylove Cudjoe, born and raised in Ghana, moved to the US in 2019 to further her education on the Spanish language and culture. Ivylove is pursuing a doctoral degree in Texas A&M University with the Department of Global Languages and Cultures. Currently in her third year, she has research interests in Africana Studies, Latin American Literature, Language Pedagogy and Film Studies. She holds a master’s degree in Hispanic Studies from Western Michigan University. She holds a great love for poetry and has a collection of poems published with the 12th volume of the WMU graduate student research journal, The Hilltop Review, under the title, “As I go along.” Ivylove’s love for poetry has brought her into contact with poetic centered projects and events such as that of the “Landscapes of Belonging” project at present in Texas A&M University. She hopes to share more poetic pieces with the world to serve as a bridge for others to travel to her thoughts and self.
Jordan Nixon is a multidisciplinary storyteller who recently graduated with her Masters in Communications from Texas A&M University. Her work explores the ways those at the intersection of marginalized identities make place, preserve memory, and formulate identity.