Read the Poem Navel by Robin Coste Lewis
Lewis is the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. She is the author of Voyage of the Sable Venus, the winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Poetry. A Cave Canem graduate, she is a Ford Foundation Art of Change fellow, and a Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California. We crawled out of her navel one by one, then waited until we were all here. That lucid moment when the last wet child learned to stand, we began walking. We walked slowly. We took some time. We took more than that. When we began to grow hungry, some offered to turn themselves into animals. Smiling, they said, Here, eat me. Others turned into water, rivers, trees. Some turned themselves to dirt, so we could walk a path. We crept toward the edges, clawed and crawled to the top of the world, and there we clung. Instead of a mouth, a woman spoke through a vibrant yellow bill. Sometimes we visited the man on the moon. Sometimes he let us inside his house. Sometimes his transparent hollow wife would dance. Later, when people asked us, Where did you come from? We could only answer water. A whole language comprised of just one word. We walked onto the water. We built houses, on the water. We had babies on the water. We sewed clothes made of water with needles made of ice. The night so constant changed us. The planets taught us a vocabulary, without any alphabet. The trees began to walk. At night, the ocean glowed, green from underneath. Our roofs were made of whale ribs, our lamps were stone, that burned clear oil. And now I've turned my face into this page so we could sit here together again.