Imani Woomera's delicious lover

Hero

-Imani Woomera

He was born in Puerto Rico
Style strait sweet loco
He has a way with word
I call him most delicious
lover
while other words slip from
my tongue like azucar
I have to be careful to take
Him in small doses
Not to overdose on
Sweetness so potent
He is fly
Like birds in V formation
Heading south seeking sun
As Amazonian passeros
Passing over wilderness
Wild
He makes me open as
Pacific ocean
I was born to swim these
Waters
He tantalizes my senses
With latino tongue
Making even mundane
Words sound sexy like
Candado
Seriously it means padlock
I walk in trance locked on
Him
Palms interlaced
He is too smooth
I sip off him during
Droughts of freshness
He tastes like tomorrow
His eyes envelop tears
I watch them drip silently
Pain does not translate into
Vocabulary
Even for the best of poets
Some things can not be
said
Like what it feels like when
someone you love takes
their own life
You live today to save
what remains from being
lost forever
Your life becomes their
legacy
And EP for eternal memory
A vinyl
This is real
This right here.
Is real.





Imani here succeeds to intoxicate you with sensual words. Be careful ‘not to overdose on/ sweetness so potent’. With no evident concrete rhyme, this poem has superb flow that seems to materialize from no where as you go from the first word to the next. She is deeply enthralled (yet unwilling for a complete surrender) by this mystique, heart breaker of a Latino man. He wields a certain effect over her, she confesses that ‘he makes me open like the pacific ocean’ followed by non-less a confessional line of acceptance.
She has incorporated powerful imagery that seems to harmonize idea and the flow in this poem resulting in the most sensually tantalizing feel. The allusions; imperious.
There’s however no escaping the complete melancholic turn-around towards the end that the poet impeccably timed and executed as subtly as if she was gunning for a silent stun effect. Her lover has a deeper meaning to the persona as she finds condolement and solace in her lover. He gives her hope in the face of adversity, to strive forward with life.
‘…I sip off him during
Droughts of freshness
He tastes like tomorrow
His eyes envelop tears….’

Powerful. Just powerful. When someone deals with two intense themes like love and death/suicide/loss then this is exactly what you get even though it feels like the theme of death came as an afterthought and I just can’t place my paw on that.
I will not immortalize Taban Lo Liyong's two pence-take that East Africa is ‘a literary desert’, she may not be in residence but Imani definitely belongs here and we’re proud of that. Keep churning that creative mill Imani, tuko na imani kwako.