Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s preview coverage of Miami Book Fair (MBF) 2022! The poets whose work you’ll be reading every weekday from October 15 through November 15 are just a few of the many authors from around the world participating in this year’s MBF, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They all look forward to sharing their work, thoughts, and ideas both in person and online. Between November 13-20, new poet conversations and readings will be launched and available for free on miamibookfaironline.com (in addition to other content). For more information, visit the website and follow MBF on Instagram and Twitter at @miamibookfair and use the hashtag #miamibookfair2022.
When I ask him to cut as’ab he hesitates, then shudders it gone. He pulls a stalk away, shows his grandson how to stomp it down, crack the stalk at the base so the roots keep growing, shows him oud, musical knuckle of root-band, bud furrow and leaf scar. Canines tear and molars grind, we tongue the sweet sting, spit pulp and pluck string while he tells us how neighborhood kids spun quarters and whacked them with a stick of as’ab. Whoever stuck the spinning quarter got to keep it. The quarter or the cane I ask, and he laughs. Then I grew up. He holds the as’ab along one forearm like an offered prayer, drives the knife down, peels down the purple-green stalk and spins one about fellahin who were sucking sugarcane telling stories all night, couldn’t find their canes and had to hobble home in the morning and he laughs and we laugh hard, as hard as the year. When I ask if I can help he shakes his head because he once drove a knife down into his forearm cutting as’ab and his memory of sweetness with pain is long and long, as long as the sugarcane.
Sherry Shenoda won the 2021 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for her poetry collection Mummy Eaters and was shortlisted for the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.
This poem originally appeared in Plough Quarterly No. 32. The author grants permission.
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