“What Does the Mouth Do When It Loses Its Ability to Speak?” by Antoanieta Nsimba

2023 Maine Literary Award Winner for Youth Competition in Poetry

She destroys the scent of my classroom

where I’m unfamiliar with English, turning pale

by burning—cigarettes as accessory,

not knowing what she knows,

a white woman’s

family tree painted with births & names:

cup of coffee spilling

the last piece of my dad’s face:

a red X on my work.

By fall, I will wake you up.

I stand up from my seat to go to the bathroom

like my father searching for a bucket of cold water,

You should go back and sit! she yells.

placing my legs inside.

I can’t hold it anymore, and run out of the class

with Havaianas sandals & a puppy-eyed please

without telling anyone. My gray trousers are soaked like mud

in sleep. He sees me vivid like sparklers

—I tie my green sweater around my waist—

with the guts to stand up in my poem.

You peed on yourself, a girl says to me.

At some point he is watching.

Ma’am Dalhen asks, Do you want to comb my hair?

We have to finish the work.

I’m not different than her;

it’s just our stories happened differently;

she never goes a day without smoking

I don’t remember snow falling

Antoanieta Nsimba is nineteen years old and was born in Soyo, Angola. She is an active and quiet person, a bit shy, who has the ability to ask questions when she is curious. Her poem is contrapuntal and can be read left to right, as well as the left side and right side individually. Her childhood dream was to be a businesswoman. Her lifetime dream is to be a lawyer.