I Know How to Fix Myself
Akashic Books
Cover art by Ficre Ghebreyesus
The title of this cluster of powerful, devastating poems implies there’s a flaw in the poet that needs repairing, and that flaw is ancestry . . . Makue’s is a lyric biography, a daughter’s witness to the world of men and women . . . Though angry, though hurting, she is confident that she possesses the agency to complete her repair. She doesn’t hope she can heal herself. She “knows how to fix” herself.
Honoreé Fannone Jeffers, from the prefaceseasons of alone
“seasons of alone,” by Thabile Makuethe winter scatters the strands
of your hair like cluttered echoes
like chasing your father uphill
like a purse as unkempt as your mother’s heartyour mother was a spring day when she had you
and then the dust
and the wind
and the things that are torn awayin the summer
you wear your father’s broad shoulders
like a new christmas day two-piece
or your father’s things wear youfruits don’t ripen in the autumn
or you losing your grasp on a branch
falling not too far from your mother
from hollow
from lonely