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Prodigal Daughter

included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Sita)

Hiwot Adilow

Akashic Books

Cover art by Aida Muluneh

Purchase:

  • Akashic Books

Getting Dressed

in ruffles and taffeta, dressed in matching sweats,
in bright fuschia socks, rocking a baldie in church

pants cut into shorts, in dress shirts tied into knots,
singing the next verse chuckling under the moon.

Jupiter and Venus cloaked beneath the peachfuzz
buds on my upper lip, the few sprouts of thick hair

grown into carpets all over my killer legs, bared
like I forgot I thought shame was a virtue. I saw

rigid postures of gossip disguised as delight split
rooms in bilateral pews, the choir swayed palm up

in pomegranate gowns, babies clapped in 2/2
time entranced by praise to dance and laugh

while mothers clocked the proverbs 31 t-shirt
my mom got to announce I’d make a good bride

someday, a rib to be equally yoked, but I shirked
glory, rent my garments, ran barking toward the erotic

slobbering like Eve in the garden starved by want;
a taste of true knowledge in what I hypothesized.

Hiwot Adilow
Prodigal Daughter by Hiwot Adilow Download Image
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