the coalition zine featuring writing and art by girls

and women of colour

Tutulu Feagai.

Henrietta Adu.

Patricia Alvarado.

Emily Wang.

Paulinha de Santana Bomfim.

Deborah Tsogbe

Donna Kazimarki.

Ola Falehti.

Omayeli Arenyeka

Batol Bashri

Jenvieve Ting.

Fabiola C (Editor)

"I lost my mothers tongue

mãe me perdoa

I listen to her speak rapidly. words falling from her mouth, boca, like water.

Slang thrown, laughter, her melodic drawl smooth and intentional with each

syllable.

eu te amo

I mimic her. curl my tongue around each letter, let it drip from my lips, lábios,

like a child learning to speak.

quão bonita, minha menina negra

I try to copy her confidence in a language I can only understand brokenly. a

culture I am nostalgic for but never knew enough about.

você fala português? Que vergonha! por que não?

how do I answer a question I cannot find the words to speak.

I want to find the half stolen by shame, vegonha, we never deserved to feel for

raising daughters in languages, in cultures, that belonged to us too.

I envy my sisters who can speak their tongue, inveja.

minha querida, I just want to go home too"

-

-paulinha de santana bomfim

by emily wang

I.

I may come from a long line of powerful, psychic women, but I only know of one. Aghdas

Banu. Maternal grandmother, former Angel Scout of Iran, current enigma. Well, only to me.

What I know comes from small stories, unwillingly given out by my still grieving mother, who

wants her memories all to herself. There she is on the shore of the Caspian, running into the

waters, gleefully shouting “I’m going to swim to Russia!” Here she is scorching an almond with

a candle to use it as kohl. She would hand the unburnt end to my mother, who would gobble it

up. Here she is again, bringing girls from impoverished homes into her own, feeding them,

clothing them, protecting them, her only rule being they attend and excel at school. But, the

stories I am most starved to hear are the in-depth, eyewitness recollections of her supernatural

powers. Her psychic abilities are a commonly accepted fact among our family and friends. She

nonchalantly engaged in everyday magic, thinking it more a necessity than a gift. An

uncomfortable encounter with a black cat raised a pregnant car crash victim from the dead. A

hen’s untimely demise replaced my mother’s, who remembers the spell, then vomiting a pure

black liquid before fainting. Seer, clairvoyant, and goddess. These few tiny truths, doused in

awe,are hidden away, spoken of rarely, quietly, discreetly. They are all I have of her.

II.

I met her when I was a very small child. I was fearful, gnashing and biting my way out of her

embraces, her love. Why I did it, I don’t know, but I do know that I hate myself for it. Perhaps I

sensed the beginnings of what was to be a fatal thirteen year long coma, and foolishly withdrew

my love from a woman who couldn’t help but be alienated. Slowly, I became gentle, sweet,

trusting. I adored her. Cried hysterically when she was leaving, throwing my body onto her

purse, thinking if she couldn’t take it, she couldn’t leave...

Then she was gone.

I have nothing.

III.

“I heard,” my mother whispered to me, even though we were alone,

“I heard that people with supernatural powers are vulnerable to those kinds of comas.

I think that’s what happened to your grandmother. That’s what your aunt told me. Everyone else

thinks so too.”

IV.

When I push my hair away from my forehead, I can see hints of her in my face. I refuse to look

myself in the eyes, fearful of being overcome by the rawness of an uncomfortable longing.

Hurting from being denied a person, wanting a presence, all the while unsure of who she is and

what she would have been to me. I grasp at and collect whatever I can of her, storing it deeply

into myself, far from my own reach, unwilling to contemplate else I will gag with unwept sorrow.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. If she comes to me in my own clairvoyant dreams, catalyzes my powers,

whispers the words that form my premonitions, acts as the source of my own mystical

experiences, I wouldn’t know it was her. I don’t know her, but I know I need her. Every breath I

take screams her name, looking for her past the fog of death and searching for her within myself.

She is lost to me. What more can I do? I can only resign myself to exorcising her absence

through my words. Through these words. Other than that, I have nothing. -donna karmikazi

I’m no longer lost without your voice. I can see in the distant horizon a place where your

name tastes less like ash and bitters and more like the corner lemonade by the house I

grew up in and lost to a bank man in casual Friday attire. I am okay with being without

you, and I am okay with being unsure. Our propensity to have everything sorted, in boxes,

in moments, in these spaces in our minds where everything is right and rational and real –

it doesn’t touch me even in the slightest without you here. Thank you for leaving. I would

have never known myself if you had stayed. Some days when the sky is colored melon and

pale pink and I swear I hear you laughing in a café I brush thoughtlessly past, I am bound

to the whole world from the balls of my feet. My body is coiled in chains and the brick

that sends me drowning is a memory of you in an apartment we shared in the spring. And

every time I am struck like iron lightning by our unfinished past I pay my condolences to

your memory. I stagger forward. I remember my limbs are mine and mine alone and I teach

myself how to walk without your existence powering the muscles behind my legs. Again. I

repeat it to myself under my breath when I close my eyes for half of a half of a half of a

second when all I can see in that dark lapse of time is your name written in broken

halogen lights in your hometown. Help me forget you. Never forget you. Give me time to

forget that you were everything and remember I am something more than the person who knew

you best. Give me a little time to remember how to spell my name without you feeding me

lines from behind the curtain. Teach me how to remember that the heart that beats beneath

my rusted chest plate isn’t anyone else’s but my own. Teach me that and then leave me.

Clean me of you.

-jenevieve ting

prayer by patricia alvarado

by tutulu feagai

You can’t ignore the resigned disappointment in your mother’s eyes when you

stand alone at the mosque, awkwardly separated from the other college-aged

youth in their flowing white robes - the girls heads’ covered with silk

scarves, and the boys’ with white caps. They laugh and talk animatedly.

“Salaam” ing the adults they encounter, who ask about their studies during

the school year.

"I’m finishing up undergrad, getting ready for Occupational Therapy School"

"Physical Therapy School"

"Nursing School"

"Med School"

and other varieties of the medical persuasion. You wouldn’t know what to tell

these elders if they asked the same of you, other than the fact that you were

traveling to France for a semester. And you wouldn’t necessarily teach with

two language degrees. And there were a lot of thing you could do those

degrees; you just couldn’t tell them all of those things now.

You have to swallow the lump in your throat when you mother tells you that

you’re losing your culture at that school of yours. You think that perhaps

you have been partying too much with these oyinbo and their booze and

cigarettes. This was something you were always conscious of, but to hear the

words from your mother is like digging a scythe into your heart. And you

suddenly feel guilty for looking forward to returning to your insular, white

bread school — despite its racism, its sheltered small-town student body, and

the fact that you will almost always be the token black person in any given

space unless it is designated for students of color.Junior year will be the

first time in college that you live with other black people, a fact which

pleases your mother and you too, although you are afraid of their African

judgment. You are all too conscious of the American-ness at the heart of your

Nigerian upbringing.

You lament the fact that being jobless in August ferments contemplation and

painful self-honesty. But in the long run, you know this is beneficial. You

look forward to learning how to drive with your dad and making egusi soup

with your mother.

-ola faleti

KJb

-batol

we were sprawled on the floor of my slowly emptying room staring at the ceiling listening to crowds

cheer two streets over for the youth soccer team. it was cold but i liked it that way because when the

window was closed i felt like i was suffocating.

i was dragging my fingers up and down your arm, trying to elicit the same shivers i got when you looked

at me. it was late and you should have been home by then, but you stayed and let me cry for once. You

smelled like grass and wood – you’d been working that day, earlier, and I could see the tired in your

smile.

you said, with your smile never reaching your eyes, that I looked tired too. i nodded, tracing circles on

your stomach. for a minute i rested my hand over your heart and felt the lazy rhythm, remembering that

my heart does the same and when lying side by side we sound like a song for rainy days.

you had your face in my hair and your legs under mine, singing softly in my ear. Your breath was hot

and a little wet but it was familiar so I let you continue reciting lyrics because that’s the only thing you

get to do now. i was talking about losing my mother’s ring, i think - her wedding ring. silver and gold and

carved and gone. it used to glint in the light - it used to be the excuse you had for holding my hand.

nowadays its buried in one of the boxes and you take my hand under the pretense of giving me comfort

(but you’re the one with puppy dog eyes).

when the song started you startled and looked at me. “really?”

yes. really.

you don’t know the words but i do, and i can tell you i love you in three different verses and watch you

realize it in the chorus. i can say goodbye in the first line and not have to hear it again until the last

word, can remember why i wanted to know you in three minutes and forget it when the notes fade out.

this is the song we listened to when you first met me, hiding in the library stacks. this is the song i

learned to sing for you, alone in my room. this is the song you will remember me by, i hope, tears

springing to your eyes when it comes on the radio. i hope that one day you are lying down in your

college dorm staring at the ceiling with someone else when this song comes on and you smile because

you know then what you don’t know now

(that people leave and pack up their things, leaving space in your heart for anyone willing to buy).

if you remember me at midnight shoot off a quick message.

in the future i will be lying in bed in my slowly emptying room trying not to cry, remembering the night

you should have gone home but stayed instead to let me sob into your favorite red shirt, when the room

was cold because i didn’t want to suffocate and california was the last golden thing between us.

i lost a dozen things that night but you are forever sealed inside five verses and a lonely melody. sad

tunes will always be about this; quiet nights will always be for you.

-deborah tsogbe