For the Darkness By Kiera Kyoto

The Rising Phoenix Review

February 27

For the Darkness

How is it
that I am self-hating for not watching as entertainment
the history of brutality against my darkness?
When I've traveled to the farthest reaches
of our ancestors on the Continent
in the middle east
in Nubia
The place they reference like Narnia
to rediscover the glory
of our beautiful heritage
rather than pay tribute to our darkest days
when we were hanging from trees
while someone laughed
and read from the bible
I am self-hating for twisting, washing, oiling my precious threads
grown from my noble crown
rather than wear a plastic cap
made to look, feel like a white woman's freedom
Hair grown on the head of an Asian woman
How is it that I'm called self-hating
when I can speak to my brothers and sisters in their native tongue
Swahili, Arabic
instead of the tongue of corporations who twist
For profit
Contort
our artful language
to sell as a commodity to the masses
Make me understand how I am a self-hating black woman
when I fell in love with and married the boy down the street
who saw me and never once talked about my body
or called me anything other than my name
Who walked me into the salon to shave my head clean
to restore myself from the chemicals that solidified my blackness
and burned my scalp
Scabbed and scarred
like the spines of those who dare to glance up from the cotton
How is it that loving and living from the mother
My mother, nourished by Bedouin women who gave me my dignity back
took it back from the fleeting, demeaning waters of Americas poisoned wells
But yet somehow for you when I tug on my hair without risk of it falling on the ground
and dance and speak freely without sorrow and poison from images of the bloodshed of kin
I've been self-hating rather than the free bird Maya Angelou told me I could Be.

By Kiera Kyoto

Biography:

Kiera Kyoto is a mixed-race Black American writer and producer from Vermont. After working with street kids in Peru, bedouin women in the Negev, and working as an Arab Folklore Researcher and Guest Lecturer at Sultan Qaboos University, Kiera had a stint as a Civil Society Coordinator to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Kiera's writing pulls from various global subcultures, surrealism, and nature to capture characters of all walks of life. Kiera graduated magna cum laude with B.As in Philosophy and Politics from Ithaca College and M.F.A. in Screenwriting from AFI Conservatory. She currently lives in Los Angeles. For The Darkness was written at the start of the global pandemic. It is her first poem.