mummies in plastic fabric
“civilized” cadavers
they teach me to hate
my skin, she is hungry
they teach me to hate
my body, she is broken
they teach me to wear their cloth
my wrappers, stay abandoned
they teach me to pray rosaries
my beads, lie lifeless
no.
I am priest and shrine
graceful as pythons gliding through water
glorious as parcels of wax print
here is what my vodun looks like:
brown as the earth that cups the sun
A’BENAAWUKU-LARBI co-authored The Ocean Between Us, an epistolary project documenting an intergenerational creative process developed between two women authors in Accra and Los Angeles. She is an alumnus of the Mo Issa Workshop 2021, and her work has appeared in Lolwe, the Contemporary Ghanaian Writers’ Series and the Journal of The Writers Project of Ghana. She edited The Big Yellow Post and Accra We Dey, digital anthologies on gendered violence and climate justice respectively. She is also a runner up for the 2023 Adinkra Poetry Prize. Her poems have been read at the Climate Crisis Film Festival and similar international fora on climate justice and women’s rights. Her professional background encompasses gender, energy law and management, and artistic activism . She writes about women and for women. A’bena co-runs the Happy Monthlies Project for ending period poverty in rural Ghana.
