Poem by Anja Marais
BLACK
WHITE
MOTHER
by Anja Marais
Anja Marais
is a South-African born and Miami based visual artist.
Using History as leitmotiv
she deconstructs transgenerational and ecological lineages
to reinterpret cultural heritage.
An Ethnopoet.
photo credit: Ana Carballosa
WHITE MOTHER; BLACK MOTHER
I am marbled bread.
I had a black mother and a white mother.
My birth mother, a pious Christian, held me in her arms and whispered:
You are born in sin, seek the light of redemption.
My Sotho caretaker, animistic, carried me under a blanket on her back, singing:
You were born pure like a flower, but dark forces will try and take it away.
My love for both my mothers tenterhooks splitting my being.
Duality cleft like an axe through my head
creating a scar in my brain
growing an ashen egg nestled between my lobes
pressing into soft tissue
ever swelling.
Viral Encephalitis diagnosed the doctor
trying to save my life.
Flying his bush plane to the nearest African village for the last bottle of
expired antivirals.
The egg in my brain burst open leaving a velvet scarlet cavity.
Fruit pits spilled out. Pocking stains into grey. I, like Persephone eating
the pomegranate, gained the ability to walk in both worlds,
upper and lower.
• • >
© 2018
I entered a mirrored world Effervescent Glassy Gossamer
I became a neon nomad gliding on a viscoelastic stream of pitch. Down
perpetual corridors. Sequined fireflies in corners Rhythmic
pulsating
light
A heartbeat webbed, woven in unison with pulsars lightyears away.
The corridor serpentined deeper. I grew smaller damper louder
Through the murk. The outlines of wars, conflict, torture. I was
crushed between deafening battalions screeching sharp
metal saltpeter dripping horses stench of rot & dreg
cementing between corpses blood coagulating
when
an alabaster hand grabbed me, pulled me by the breast. Out unto a
meadow, an oasis smelling of ancient soil.
Grass cupping my feet,
breezes roughing my face.
• • >
© 2018
Encircling the meadow, seven figures. Edifices of wisdom. Stacked
cairns of time holding hands, forming a golden fetter of infinity, beaming
light, cascading into argent mica, confirmed by the floral perfumed air.
Carried on the humming breeze, their names:
Kali
Hathor
Chhinnamasta
Inanna
Freya
Cerridwen
Asase
All drinking from the pitch stream of war, soaking it up through their
nurturing mouths. Swallowing and churning it into nectar. With the ease of
an airborne dandelion seed exhaling a fragrance. A thin vapor accumulating
into clouds, rising up and drifting over heptad continents and seas. Unsealed,
showering sanative waters, washing baptizing all an aroma of wet leaves.
• • >
This riant routine of digestion and transformation effortless persistent.
Respiring
they guarded me. Shielded behind their backs of turtle-like shell,
they lifted me up and drank me through gleaming lips. Exhaling my
dissipation into the firmament.
I drifted. Small cloud. Boundless. The playful thermals passed me along
between eagles and geese, feathering a bed across the sky. I watched the
exhausted doctor fly past me in his tiny plane. The metal tail tucked me
into its wake, pulling closer towards earth, earth the beautiful round
matriarch.
From above:
My black mother and my white mother holding hands over a child’s bed.
My white mother, singing Psalm 23.
My black mother, bowing over an offering of bread to her ancestors.
This is how I remember them for decades to come.
Bridging arms suspended over my revived body.
• • •
ANJA MARAIS
IG/@ANJAMARAIS
FB/@ANJAMARAISART
WWW.ANJAMARAIS.COM
2019
ORLANDO MUSEUM OF ART
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