Oya for President (to be read OutLoud)

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Wandering Woman (Oya)

i want a storm for president

sweeping into every city

with the wild warning of clouds

shaped like Shirley Chisolm’s hair

i want a storm for president

i want a storm for president

i want a cleansing

i vote for the anger of black women

with chicken on their hands

with factory processing parts in the crooks of their elbows

i know all that rage is somewhere waiting

the already platform for everything ever

wash it out

i want the TV to tell me

how the earth is taking herself back

how no relations are foreign

unless we are ready to leave the planet

and that no pipelines are acceptable

not for fracking or stacking our children in prison like trash

earth will heave from her gut and break open

tell me something about executive power

tell me something about a state of emergency

tell me something in the language of rain and wind

so I can understand

ask the national hurricane center

they know

how hurricane Ida named herself

in advance solidarity with Joaquin

fill the capital with the high winds of black self-defense

pushing forward justice at the border

i am donating my laughter and my love

name her every time she emerges

with a name A to Z

from Audre to Zora

give me Oya for president

give me messy and unafraid

let her emerge off the coast of Africa

with a skirt of gorgeous bones

and be met by reporters when she comes home

no debate

just 24 hour coverage

reporters say her raging name

stand outside at the shoreline

so she can slap them in the face

vote for wind

which is already primary

vote for goddess

moving on the face of the deep

let her knock down

the towers of toupéd slumlords

and the smilers who spit when they speak

let my candidate be a movement

out of the gutters into the streets

let my vice president be a prophet

who just stands there and weeps

i want so much water

that the creek and the meek overflow

so the inkstain washes out of every piece of paper money

and runs rainbow ratchet over asphalt

blending back into black

give me thunder for the legislative branch

the resounding of sound

and let lighting strike it strike it in two

until it falls to the ground

i want a priestess for president

who wakes up all our dead

and lets the children out of school

to listen to what they said

i want a whirlwind so terrifying

i want a wracking so real

that the electoral college

doesn’t know how to feel

i want Oya for president

i want a thorough surprise

and the second you see her…

all rise.