I burned tufts,
plumes, tough
onyx cotton
slicked to silk.
I let knots loc,
clipped buds,
revved ‘til I hit skin.
Corinthian sin.
I feel mighty everytime
black splinters grow thick.
I’m done trying to control
what snakes from my skull.
Hiwot Adilow is an Ethiopian-American poet from Philadelphia. She is co-winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and author of the chapbooks In the House of My Father (Two Sylvias Press, 2018) and Prodigal Daughter (Akashic Books & African Poetry Book Fund, 2019). Her work appears in Vinyl, Callaloo, The Offing, Reconstructed Magazine, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in The BreakBeats Poets Vol 2.0: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books, 2018).
