Written piece
A Slow Jazz of Yarns
Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri
Ghana
About this piece
A Slow Jazz of Yarns explores the grit and beauty of Kente weaving. Through the lens of Adinkra symbols like Sankofa and Gye Nyame, the poem templates the tension between sacred tradition and the gritty, chaotic sludge of modern reality.
A Slow Jazz of Yarns
A weaver’s sudden slickness slices such raw rhythm through
the warp, the shuttle biting into tension, a wooden heart-beat
a dollop of odd on gold. Sluggish miracles of silk clutch Tuesday’s
stupid brazen light and wink gorgeous while belching sudden
scattered patterns. And over there, a comb. It’s dusty shadowed
teeth spidered into hundreds of crusted pins in search of bared
fiber or dwelling. Skimming leviathan needles, their eyes bared,
snort the sugar of such leaving. Gleeful, they survive on friction,
exploded pigments, the gooey glued spine of—wait—that looks
like Gye Nyame. Some artisan’s vision, gaseous, a dimming star
splayed and so gently spinning, threatens its own soft seams,
collides sloppily with looms, power lines, shards of four-doors.
And yarns, of course, are the monsters we always knew they were.
With lengthy gnarled arms raw and lightning-slashed, they fist
through the dark rushing depths to etch hungered talons against
blue. On the soft bark of an oak, D-W-E-N-N-I-M-E-N-N-I-M-E-N,
knifed in fever. The dye’s black teeth reach for the helpless vowel.
Networks deftly edit and craft this sexy glint of sudden fabric, wait
for the weaver’s bobbing bulk to sweetly swirl into view,
framed—now!—by the Sankofa. Beneath this weave, at deeper
weave, soulless shit reigns, a sludge of skitters and screams,
everything that drains from the dying curdles, folds into hellish soup.
Market queens, baby daddies, vague Baptists, scared cops slog
through, the slow wilting jazz of their legs razored by the murk.
What claws at their stride is piss, lies about tension. What slows
their forward is fetid, fervently lapping, E coli, fuel, old meat.
Nudges toward hellfire hiss against forearm and knee. It’s almost
laughable, this wading through the thick toward other rain. That
artisan whirls such splayed grace on drenched sky. Better to rest,
succumb to float, shine.