I’m Tellin’
All unsaids, All secrets are not created equal. Some secrets kin with our bodies because our bodies know that they need to be the safe, the harbor for such things. This is not about that. Some secrets turn a walk, a regular gait to a saunter because the body tastes its sweetness. This is not about that. Certain kinds of othas, secrets that is, well….they bloom somethin else, the poison that eats us from the inside out.
This be bout dat. Dat latter kind. Dat otha kind.
It’s not just in the toxic we trust. We grow. We throw seeds. We replicate it.
*
When I was a child , there was a statement that we would say that would check the perceived wrong doer. It would be something like, ’Oooooh, I’m tellin.’ What precedes the ‘tellin’ is the series of oooo’s mixed with the arrangement of vowels and consonants after that short phrase all together, in sum, in calculation, may make the 24 million miles long tail of Hailey’s comet green-eyed.
I’m tellin’ was a threat.
It was to check the doer who was already in deep doin wrong. It was a nod to the way one was willing to betray secrets, willing to betray the real monster who hid under covers.
The tellers of the toxic became the snitches, the snitches is who we said would get stitches In those streets
What does it mean to have secrets as the topography of one’s body?
Be damned, dare stitches, dare the can of whoops ass…I’m tellin.’
No threat…but invocation
Viens
Viens ici
Je ne te l’ai jamais dit mais
Oui je l’ai fait
*
Gwendolyn said it best, “…Even if you are not ready for the day,
It will not always be night.” By not ready, we mean whatever you are holding.
Whatever is hiding within the folds and wrinkles and twists of
unmade beds.
Whatever is being passed across through invisible notes
All ink doesn’t vanish. Some just wears…refusin’ ignoring
By not ready, we mean through the hush of phone calls.
The phone calls that contain whispers.
The phone calls that have no phone lines that require that and only THAT one other person picks up the receiver
The thing that returns to the pit spiraled tight behind the spiral of the belly’s button. The thing that makes it feel like each look by another means they know it because of the way it reads on the body. Tethered and bound. Whatever it is that you are holding and hoping that the sun won’t beat you to it…It’s coming
Je le referais
Je le referais juste pour le chemin
*
What if we said that the keepers of that kinda…. are the sleepers who never awake. What if we said we will nail their coffins shut
And forbid them from wake. What if we flipped the script on the secret keepers, the pain dwellers, all gates and their guards,
The bottom feeders who feed on the toxic blooms, the corpse eaters who grow fat full and bloated off the bodies that become emaciated from thoooose kinda secrets
What if…We take their power back. We read the topography of the secret laden body and become fluent. Armed with the tongues that know how to untaste poison, daggers in hand.
We the kind who realllll good with the way the sun sneaks up, how it creeps from behind the curtains of dark. The heat, we feel it on our shoulders. We refuse to hide from the way it will come get us
Nous avons tous été pese
Nous sommes toujours trouve…voulant
Nous ne pouvons pas le nier
Something about the way a secret taste
Jevu hu fair sa—
Shanta Lee Gander is an artist and multi-faceted professional. As an artist, her endeavors include writing prose, poetry, investigative journalism, and photography. Her poetry, prose, and personal essays have been featured in The Crisis Magazine, Rebelle Society, and on the Ms. Magazine Blog.
Exhibitions
Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine February 2022 – Spring 2023 * Fleming Museum of Art
Books
Black Metamorphoses (Etruscan Press, 2023)
GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA (Diode Editions)
Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues
Shanta Lee, MBA, MFA Shanta
Feature Photo © Shanta Lee 2023
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