Latif Askia Ba

Contrecoup

Each day. 
I am overlapping. I am over it. 
Like the moon I have been
I can see my face shimmering 
against your stomach. My antistrophe
is a clay pot. My antistrophe is a black mare. 
You adjust me. 
It’s been a pleasure. I talk to myself 
clapping out the syllables. Hello moon hello
moon. Hello. I’ll board a plane
and sit there for hours
looking directly into your patchwork. 
This is my face. Here are my eyes.

Latif Askia Ba is a poet with Choreic Cerebral Palsy from Brooklyn, New York. He’s currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University and is the print poetry editor for the Columbia Journal's 61st issue. He's also an author at Stillhouse Press, who published his first full-length collection, The Machine Code of a Bleeding Moon, in September of 2022. He was the First Place Winner of the 2021 Perceptions Writing and Art Contest, judged by Sheila Black, and the Second Place Winner of the Iris N. Spencer Award in 2020.