Basket - No‘u Revilla

She brings her host a basket:

earrings, mats, testimony

This basket, she says, is medicine.

Some may ask: what is a basket to a bomb?

Why bring medicine when they send ships    bombing

                     their laps

                     to jellyfish

They didn’t know what to call them, she said.

They didn’t know the name.

this ocean

     an open wound

  but who gives a damn

moonlight scorched from wombs

who gives a damn

who gives a damn

  who gets to damn who

              She brings her host a basket

Then, bone by bone

her low tide lips

       reveal the names

    her gods & wayfinders

    her mother & country

       her island sea

        This is a basket of names,

                                  a basket of stories.

For afterbirths

of fallout –

war-petalled &

sacred-starving,

her story is the medicine we ache for.

for Kathy

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No‘u Revilla (20th century) USA

Source: The Missing Slate