​Maame in the Alcove, by Michael Sandler

Untitled, by Meshack Asare (Ghana) 1968

​Maame in the Alcove 
 
I’m not among those willing to look back 
toward the old gods, those who gave comfort, fear,
rites to feel whole. But she twists back
desperate to cling to them, Cape Coast bollards
in time’s typhoon—its unrelenting gusts 
tug her braids westward, straightening them out.
 
Perhaps it’s ignorance of the old ways:
I can’t decipher what distresses her.
A water jug her head once bore lies cracked
beside a stool (sagging, much like her breasts),
yet the hassock at her feet a trendy pouf 
covered in durable polyester chintz.
 
I keep such knickknacks in an attic baized 
in webs, mildew, dust: a warped psalter, masques
from a bygone fête—remnants 
of gatherings fit for her mise-en-scène? 
Why does she parade them—jugs, handholds
on a cliff-face as if they’d stop a freefall?
 
Like me, she sits alone; they’ve shuttered
the old marketplace. But if she’ll shop in Shoprite’s
fluorescent anonymity for her yams,
cassava flour, I could help her connect--
where thousands stream a grainy highlife clip
and google Who are Asase Yaa, Nyame?
 
Michael Sandler
 
Michael Sandler is the author of a poetry collection, The Lamps of History (FutureCycle Press 2021). His work has appeared in scores of journals, including recently in THINK, Literary Imagination, and Smartish Pace. Previously he worked as a lawyer, in addition to writing poems. He lives near Seattle; his website is www.sandlerpoetry.com.