Lost Translations

Like two hours swallowed up by ten minutes more
words and their meanings
ride on the yellow bus from Itapuã
history changing as change is exchanged
morphing from caterpillar to butterfly in the gilded cages of black romance
from butterfly to “folklorico”
black(face?) on white memories
performing to preserve
performing to survive
preserving to survive

Black head stones tell a different story
not of pillars, but Independence from pillagers who tried to pillory a people in Pelourinho
whispering at Havaianas
screaming at heels
The blood has run
now the money flows
into whose hands, you already know
A statue of resistance standing where sleeping dogs lie and children beg and pigeons poop and junkies roam and Hottentot Jemimas lead tourists to restaurants for a comicao

Näo.

Beautiful
I just want you to know you’re my favorite girl from Ipanema
Que saude? Hein mainha!
Catcalls sound the same in every language

Como se fala “Objectification”?
Como se fala “Fetishization”?
Como se fala “White girl hair with Black girl booty”?
Como se fala “The huff of frustrated expression and lost translation”?

Hand signals and smiles
can’t lead the way home when you’re lost
but words travel like food
upsetting stomachs and satisfying memories
satisfying stomachs and upsetting memories
depending on who’s cooking
who’s remembering
who’s speaking
who’s reading
who’s writing

Who’s translating?
Who’s preserving?
Who’s finding?
Who’s surviving?

In the hills of Cachoeira
The Sisterhood of the Good Death saved lives
serving, selling, scrubbing, striking up deals,
buying freedom

Old and black
women from Ile Ife,
you
are my favorite girls

If only we could hear the stories from your mouths,
if only the statue could explain the revolution for himself
if only we could know the conversations in the bellies of that interminable ride
ten minutes becoming two hours becoming six hundred years
Africans becoming Brasilians, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Haitians, French, British, Italian, American…
but all we have are the memories of old men
and words carved into plaques in tourist squares
pickling what is lost in memory and agenda
choosing what survives
choosing who survives

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut.” Named to the “Africa39” list of writers “with the potential and talent to define trends in the development of literature from Sub-Saharan Africa and the diaspora,” her short fiction was included in the anthology Africa39. Her work also appears in Everyday People: The Color of Life, New Daughters of Africa, and Accra Noir among others. Forthcoming from Brew-Hammond are a children’s picture book, a novel, and an anthology. Brew-Hammond was a 2019 Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellow, a 2018 Aké Arts and Book Festival Guest Author, a 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar, a 2016 Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence, and a 2015 Rhode Island Writers Colony Writer-in-Residence. Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into the darkness.