when we have to pretend your “Science” knows us / portrait of a stranded god
by MATTHEW OMOWALE ANTHONY
in Spring 2023
baaba, to the siblinghood, 2023
Ms. Curry shows us a video in her freshman biology class:
DNA are stranded
together. i want to run home and yell
at my twin, the boy who is stranded. my double
helix; spiraling is a way of Storying the Science.
if "Science" is how they've known
our stories, no amount of Study will reveal
the strandedness of God.
[rest]
it's not supposed to be said. sometimes i write
stories; stranding us
as gods; are we too Holy? Taiwo
pretend to care about Me. pretend!
we had pretending down to a Science to save
the part of us that was Taken.
and we were so Taken.
the missionaries had Taking, and
it too, was a "Science". they were so Taken up with "Science"
that when we were Taken they called us theirs, and Science
is a way of saying you know God but didn't
show him your poetry.
and when our father called, & hired PI's
the strands of God weren't found. they were "Science".
we had stories of the Taken. strands
take time to unravel. and we were unrivaled, like a telling of "Science".
run home & yell
matthew omowale anthony is a Afro-Surrealist theopoet, essayist, & host of little did u know: an abolitionist podcast that seeks to reveal the precarity inherent in transnational/racial adoption and dream of a new future by centering the voices of impacted people. Having been displaced from their family as infants via closed private transnational adoption, the bodies of matthew and his twin were purchased, & trafficked into a sundown town. matthew’s work is rooted in a lovegrief which persists, and is wholly interested and invested in co-creating Black (Adoptee) Futures wherein we are not under siege by those who claim Whiteness. His first poetry collection, You Can Not Burn The Sun is for digital sale via We Are Holding This.