Between the Future and the Familiar

Wairimu (Grace) Mugo

Circus

Somewhere in the wild jungle 

On his annual excursion down to the West Indies

The ringmaster found me

He wrapped me in his four 

no 

sixteen inch chain

And told me that he had never had the likes of me in his circus

A wild 

African 

Hippopotamus 

I was amused 

Wanted to go back to living my life In my waterhole 

Devoid of stale peanuts

And popcorn kernels 

But he lured me in there 

Made eye contact to assert his dominance 

Said he learned it from Animal planet 

And when I got to the circus 

I found that there were many animals like me

Wild horses from Equator, Bears from the Pacific 

Doves from Polynesia 

All lured with the same eyes

And the promise of fame in an animal kingdom 

And sometime around my 5th month of being there

He had gotten a habit of owning me

Marked prices of my skin as territory 

And told me I was the favorite of his animals 

And when he showed me off in my cage

And I’d hiss at the audience 

The ringmaster would calmly say

“Oh don’t mind her.  It’s that time of the month”

But last I checked hippos never got their god damn periods. 

And hippos didn’t like the sound of a chains whipping against steel cages

 or the way the ring leader used circus show tunes to hypnotize our eyes

But maybe I liked being exotic

Maybe I liked being a thing to be played with 

A thing to be  manipulated.

 And maybe I like feeling looked at for once.

And loved 

Even if it meant becoming an animal

Un-American American Girl Doll

When I was 7

I wanted one of those American Girl Dolls

You know,

The ones labeled with names like Kit and Emily

Names I wished were my own

Kit and Emliy didn’t have to worry when their teacher churned out the long African names during attendance

A sound equivalent to metal on a conveyor belt

Kit and Emily were never asked why their hair kinks crooked instead of straight.

And how factory superintendent managed to get their polyester hair so curly 

and so rigid

Instead 

Kit and Emily only worried about how the sun would hit their painted gold freckles at recess.

Instead

Kit and Emily worried about which accessory out for the American Girl Christmas collection--now 50% with each additional purchase

How I longed to be a doll

How I longed to become silicone

How I longed to have straight red hair down my back and green eyes made of glass

So I thought that if I wore American Girl Doll jeans

Wore American Girl Doll polyester jackets and legwarmers

That I would become 100% made of silicon

And if I was silicon you would see my price tag and barcode

Proving that I was

In fact

A 

100% authentic American Girl Doll 

Born and raised in a factory in Edison, New Jersey

Maybe if my parents had gotten me that American Girl Doll I wouldn’t have a heart made out of cloth and polyester

Maybe Instead I would be placed on a drawer

And have pasty peach skin

Reminding some little girl that they too can become plastic

That they too can dress and put blonde hydrogen peroxide in their hair 

and be made in a factory

But somehow

Remain the the most 

Un-American American Girl Doll

to ever exist

H u m a n   N a t u r e

Somewhere 

On the grand ceiling of the Sistine Chapel 

God touches fingers with a Black man

Don’t believe me? 

Well I saw it myself 

Between the cracked concrete of pale blue paint and ceiling wax.

You see 

what happened is that daddy 

Pauli and me were going to aunt Lil’s birthday bash 

There’s a game we like to play where we race each other to her house

Daddy always said that the first gift god ever bestowed on the Negro was the ability to run 

I is small and i is nimble 

Our black purple backs rub as we raced each other under a pale blue sky 

But then we get thirsty 

Daddy says it’s a long way to Lils and looks around longingly 

Sees one of those lukward trees that mom uses to make marmalade

He says “ain’t no harm. Ain’t no foul”

And puts his black hand on that yellow fruit

And then a whole chorus of little baby angles emerged from the sky

Then a finger 

God himself reached out his hand 

Completing the final 4th panel in Michelangelo’s iconographic 

But then he was shot 

Hit him first in his hand and second in the bottom of his head 

And all the paint on the Sistine chapel melted away

The man who shot him came out and yelled at us

Told us we were on neighborhood property and says we were trespassing 

But them trees looked like public trees to me 

On the streets as plain as daylight 

I tell that man that Daddy didn’t steal from nobody 

But he said that “stealing is what a nigger do best”

I glance down at Michelangelo’s greatest creation

His blue black body lays helpless in the grass 

I cry ceiling wax tears

And pray that one of those little baby angles  could carry us all up to heaven with 

frescos where man touches still black fingers with God

If I were there

I would ask God Why 

We was born dirty 

Why we were born to be the scorned children of Ham

When we praise his name in the highest every muggy Sunday evening 

And Why a God so fair and so beautiful would make an ugly thing like me 

Like us 

And not take daddy up and away to heaven or at least tell him to run

Because that’s all a Negro is ever good for 

I Eve

So I guess, in a sense, you deserve to be stolen from

After all,  you never asked to be tricked by a serpentine

Or to be built by the eyes of man

But still 

you did it

After all 

what is a rib?

if it only turns into weak flesh of sin in your left breast 

And you

Who once lied in the Garden of Eden

Who once believed that you had the ability of deities 

Was knocked out of Heaven 

only to be reborn a woman

This time 

it was my left rib that was stolen

A new genesis marked with the touching of breasts and genitals 

sometimes 

when I lie awake in the garden of Eden

I wonder what Eve would have done if she’d known 

If the serpent had told her that she too would be cursed to walk the Earth with no legs

Dragged by the arms of man

Clad in snake skin and sins 

If she knew that I would become like her too 

Alone 

Stolen from

Like the way Adam first  took the apple from her palm  and ate it

But I guess she deserved it

Because sin first entered the world through woman 

Paintbrush

Who told you that Black is the color of scars?

A universal symbol of all that is dark and evil

Is that what they told you when they took our land and sold our bodies?

You see

If you cut open the Earth 

The Black obsidian would condense on the skin of your right hand

Showing you that we are both raw and beautiful

Was the first man not made from the Black Earth itself?

When the Great White God first made Adam from the dirt

He saw his Blue Black body 

And marveled at it’s god-like image

The Black ink unto which the very stars are made of

This is why they told us we meant nothing 

Because they knew that gold runs through our blood

This is why the told you that Black is the death of color

When all of life itself begins in our veins

We were life before they knew what life was 

Was Adam not formed from the very Blackness of my skin?

We were beauty before they knew what beauty was 

Which is why they taught us exactly how to hate ourselves

When it’s their white bodies that come from our continent

So here I am standing where an ocean meets the horizon

So here I am standing where a planet meets a universe

Where my breasts meet my ribcage

Matter itself comes from my left finger

I create whole Earths and planets anew

from my Black nothingness

The parting of my thighs created the birth of Deities

I am the blueprint

Sacrilegious in all my right 

I am the blueprint 

I hold the paintbrush

So how can I believe I am not a god 

When life itself begins from my Black Body

Wairimu (Grace) Mugo (website) is a high school senior in Austin, TX, and a 2nd generation Kenyan-American immigrant. She has been creating art and writing poetry for as long as she can remember. Many of the themes she focuses on in her art and poetry have to do with race, gender and social issues, exploring how these elements play out in everyday interactions. For her art, social justice, and STEM are interconnected. In her free time, she enjoys obsessing over various topics such as cinema, vintage fashion, painting and anime. Grace is an incoming freshman at Brown University this fall, where she plans to major in computer science and Africana studies.