Motherland by Crystal Wilkinson

By Crystal Wilkinson

“Motherland” is excerpted from Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson. The University Press of Kentucky, 2021. Used by permission.

Photo by Aaron Rosenblum

Ohio is a long legged sister with kin i share eyes with. Twelfth Street, a
ribbon of brown faces peeping from concrete porches. High laughs on
cool June afternoons. Kentucky frowns at black faces, pulls crying
children from mothers’ laps. She lays waste to the land. In Kentucky i
glide through dusty back roads, navigate Green River trying to find out if
home is lie or truth. Starlings call my name but the state bird is a woman’s
hanging breasts & the knot that forms near her nipple; the state flower is
hate boiling rage in every pot; the constitution is 12 ways to destroy every rainbow. Sometimes Ohio calls my name, my father’s people all melded
into the body of a beautiful woman, her hips shimmying, her finger
coaxing, Come on, come here. But Kentucky, the tree-topped mountains; &
Oh she quiet — She doesn’t even have to speak a word — her hips wide,
her spine curved. She doesn’t even have to turn around & i know i want
her. There is familiarity in her scars & bruises & in mine too. Maybe she’s
frying fresh sausage from the pigs she’s slaughtered — just for me — canning blackberries for my biscuits. Even when she shrugs & turns to slap
my face, i know she’ll always be there, the one i can count on to both hurt
& heal.

Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky’s poet laureate, is the award-winning author of Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction: The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries. In addition to being the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, STORY, AGNI, and Oxford American. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky, where she is an associate professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Aaron Rosenblum is a freelance photographer and nonprofit marketing specialist. Originally from Cambridge, Massachusettes, Aaron attended Skidmore College and is now based in Brooklyn, New York. He began shooting professionally under the tutelage of Mark Ostow and focuses on projects that have a life of their own. An avid explorer, Aaron can most often be found trying new foods or exploring new lands by bike or skis.