Protective Style
by Jana Ross
She is growing her hair like a blanket around her body
Moss Woman
hangs her head in a river
She has spent a lifetime learning about herself
And found that
She has to start by loving herself
This often means an investment in boundaries
After the current has cleansed her,
She casts a protection spell around her home
But the one beside her bed each night is a body of stone
And sinks into her room of dirt
This lover who watches her
looks hungrily
“Can you give me a thousand strands?
That is but a limb to a tree”
No, she replies, if I do, I shall bleed
So the lover looks at the ground and rips up vines and leaves“
I build my own”
But every handful of Earth,
Each taking of life,
Put a pain in her side
Until she was curled around her crown
And when the lover returned,
Proud of the mimicry,
Viewed not the limp body of the Moss Woman
But instead, where she laid, a great Sycamore
She had turned into a tree
(Copyright Jana Ross; Black Diaspora, 2023)
Jana Ross, the grand prize winner of the African Diaspora Award, has always kept diaries and journals as a child. As a young girl, she exchanged poetry journals with her best friend. The intimacy of community remains one of her most cherished aspects of poetry and sharing stories. Artists like Gwendolyn Brooks, Virginia Woolf, FKA Twigs, La Dispute are among those who inspire Ross’s work. But she also credits friends and family members. In particular, her auntie, Sharon Bridgforth, a writer that she recommends checking out, inspires her the most.
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