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Writer's pictureShona Hunter

Sister Academia (for Shona and Jo)

A Poem by Kofi Fosu Forsun

Image Credit Shona Hunter


At Uni – they placate young heads from getting washed away upstream

River runs deep within The Cities; rivers of blood shed from knife's gleam

The barriers; what gates have kept us from knowing ourselves: what gates

These worlds we come from, land on which we soil, birthed with no shame


I call myself Bartholomew; I identify you as Bethesda, but we are not that

Childhood traumas we endured, brought us to this pedagogical kingdom

Self-prompted from ideology; histories where his story, her story conflict

We don't separate Indira Gandhi and India Arie, Jomo Kenyatta, Kid Capri


Large rooms where brooms sweep each student under desk; they uproot

Denounce colonial conduct perpetrated by order, supremacy, entitlement

This rebel theater: Shakespeare rewritten, where the lauded dream down

Robespierres among us, we look to other cannons for determining the truth


Sisters adjoined among academia's patricians, their speech riot is message

With these words, they rake the commons of idiomatic hate, stained walls

Without which cycles repeat, rivers run deep waters over students of color

Sisters, for us, each a rose, undoing damage, upholding right to be human



For the original version of this poem and other writing by Kofi Fosu Forsun please visit Kofi's blog. For a range of his artistic practice see the overview at the Social Performance Network.
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