moongazer

I will not ask you where you came from
I would not ask it
neither should you
-Hozier
 
let me say this: I was human once
and so frail, the weight of a machete
could split my back working in these fields
we harvested cane all throughout the day
longing for the call of night, the
cool black hollow it would bring. even now
I remember my woman--mighty as she was.
 
crying after a day’s work my own
hands trembling as we suckled stolen cane
together, that sugar the only thing that
cared if we lived or died. I buried her
in those same fields we slaved, then swooned
blindly into the sweet of a velvet dark
kept hearing my love
calling me deeper still. I grew wild
in my grief, dreamt her a moon
reaching down, until finally I grew taller
to meet her voice, a giant mighty as her
 
oh, my god, what stories these white
men will tell! let them say I would
kill my own blood rather than let
them eat, stalk sugarcane fields
as I would my own heart. you
know me, what I have done
to find my darling: look at her
crowned by nothing but the stars
in this bowl of sky. her dark hands lifted
soft and worn, my gaze
a patient delight. look at her
there beyond the moon
singing to an entranced black tide
look at me, forever in thrall, slave
to no one but wonder


The moongazer is a bloodthirsty monster fabled to hunt those who come into the fields at night.
The dutch created the moongazer to stop slaves from stealing sugarcane after dark.

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M. Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores the ways that Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. Agostini's poetry can be found in Barrelhouse Magazine, the Black Ladies Brunch Collective's anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, and other publications. Her first collection of poems, just let the dead in, was a finalist for the Center of African American Poetry & Poetics’ 2020 Book Prize, as well as the New Issues Poetry Prize. She is currently at work on a chapbook exploring the history of Nellie Jackson, a Black woman entrepreneur who operated a brothel for sixty years in Natchez, Mississippi. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, Agostini has been awarded honors and support for her work by the Watering Hole and Blue Mountain Center, as well as a 2018 Rubys Grant funding travel to Guyana to support the completion of her first manuscript.

Art: Creative Commons